


Blue on Blue

by Lindentreeisle (Captainblue)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Military Backstory, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-13
Updated: 2013-12-13
Packaged: 2018-01-04 12:05:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 32,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1080808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Captainblue/pseuds/Lindentreeisle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Members of November Foxtrot- the fifth SAS squadron, the phantom squadron- never explicitly identify themselves as such, because anyone who doesn't know they're in the unit isn't qualified to know.</p><p>John's heart was beating faster, and he managed to sit up even straighter despite his already-rigid posture.  "Sir.  Are you suggesting I'm eligible, sir?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [Something for the Rag and Bone Man](http://archiveofourown.org/works/322000) is meant as a prequel to this story. You don't have to read it, but it gives you an idea of John's state of mind.
> 
> Thanks to Mazarin, for betaing and especially for helping me figure out the end. Also thanks to: Thisprettywren, for the Latin; Lishan, for helping me talk through John’s emotional arc; and Mad-maudlin, for [the prompt that led me here.](http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/14213.html?thread=79351429#t79351429)

_8 years BSH (Before Sherlock Holmes)_

An older sergeant snagged John's elbow as he was leaving the mess after breakfast and ordered him to Major Chandra's office, where he sat down as directed and tried not to frown visibly. He had no idea what he was doing here.

Chandra was inspecting some papers centered on his blotter. "Trooper Watson," he said meditatively. "You did superbly in selection, I see."

"Sir," John said cautiously. It was considered pointless and rather rude to talk about SAS selection once you were done with the damn thing: it was hard, it was nasty, everyone had lived through it, what was where to talk about? But as any enlisted man knew, you had to permit officers to breach etiquette, no matter how egregiously.

"Your performance in tactical questioning was particularly good."

"Thank you, sir." Tactical questioning involved shouting and psychology and sleep deprivation and stress positions. John thought wryly that he'd never been complimented before over being a stubborn arsehole who didn't know when he was beaten. 

"What's your favorite bit of our training program, Watson?" Chandra looked up at him, eyes alight with piercing interest.

John was momentarily thrown, but he didn't have to consider his answer. "Um. The Killing House, sir." Chandra seemed to be waiting for something more, so he added, "Not so much the breeching, sir, but the close quarters battle." Adrenaline and snap decisions and his own life on the line if he was wrong, he _lived_ for those moments.

"You're good at it," Chandra noted, placing one hand on the papers in front of him, which John realized must related to him.

He raised his chin fractionally. What _was_ this about? "Yes, sir."

Chandra broke into a smile. "Good man. Your instructors all speak highly of you. And of course there's your specialist skillset. I must say, Watson, that it's very rare indeed we have a volunteer from the RAMC, much less a fully qualified doctor."

John carefully said nothing. He dreaded the next bit: the part where Chandra would grill him about why he was risking his life here when there was valuable work for him elsewhere. Where he'd remind John that they always needed more doctors in the Corps, that any hospital would be glad to have him. The same bunch of shit he'd been getting from every officer he met since he first enlisted in the RAMC and insisted he wanted to be a combat medical technician, not an officer. Even now, after he'd passed selection and was in training for 22 SAS, they kept it up, needling him to see if he was going to pull out and take the easier path.

"Can I ask why you're here, Watson?"

 _No, and go fuck yourself, sir,_ John refrained from saying. "With all due respect to the Medical Corps, I don't want to serve as a doctor. I want to fight. I'll use my medical training to help my unit any way I can, sir, but if I wanted to be a trauma surgeon I could have stayed in London and made a damn fine living. I don't want an RTU, sir, and I don't want to go to Sandhurst."

Chandra glared. "Who said anything about Sandhurst?"

"No one, sir," John admitted. _Oops._ He'd gotten ahead of himself, apparently- but then what was this conversation about?

"Exactly," Chandra said. "The only person entitled to use the phrase 'returned to unit' in this office is me." Before John could respond, Chandra was sliding a sheet of paper across the desk to John.

"What's this, sir?" John asked, flipping the form around so he could read it.

"Official Secrets Act," Chandra said, and tossed him a pen. "Sign it."

John scrawled his name and set the pen back down firmly. When he looked up, Chandra was eying him appraisingly again.

"Have you heard of November Foxtrot, Watson?" Chandra asked.

"Yes, sir," John admitted. "People talk about it- the fifth SAS squadron, the phantom squadron- but I assumed it was just a joke." Rumor said November Foxtrot troopers were something like James Bond meets Rambo: the idols of the SAS men, who were themselves the tough and patriotic ideal for so many.

"Only if you don't have a security clearance," Chandra said. He leaned back a bit in his chair and regarded John with a fatherly proprietorship. "Members of the unit never explicitly identify themselves as such, because anyone who doesn't know they're in the unit isn't _qualified_ to know. November Foxtrot isn't even the name- it's just what we call it unofficially, because you'll never hear it officially called anything at all. Application is by invitation only."

John's heart was beating faster, and he managed to sit up even straighter despite his already-rigid posture. "Sir. Are you suggesting I'm eligible, sir?"

Chandra smiled. "If you're interested in applying, I'd be proud to recommend you for service in November Foxtrot." John restrained an excited grin, but his brain was already singing _yes, yes, yes_. "I'd be sorry to lose you, of course- November Foxtrot technically isn't a part of the SAS at all and the chain of command is entirely different." He smiled more broadly at John's discomfiture. "Don't worry, I'm not expecting you to say you'll miss the SAS. You won't. And who knows, maybe you'll come back some day with a command."

"Oh," John said, realizing suddenly why Chandra talked about November Foxtrot in such reverent but familiar tones. "You served with them, sir? If I may ask."

"Our motto is _socii patiantur pereant soli_ , Watson." John just blinked- he didn't know _that_ much Latin. Chandra chuckled at his blank look. "Among other things, that means I'm still serving with them."

* * *

The three men waiting in the briefing room started to stand up, but settled as Captain Simpson waved an irritated hand at them. "Sit down. I'm happy to inform you that your team has now reached its full complement. Which means we can start training you properly and hopefully get you back into action before we all die of fucking boredom." Suppressed snickering. "Shut up. Have a seat, Watson."

The room was small, less than a dozen seats crammed in around a circular table; the soldiers already present had apparently kicked some of them back out of the way, and they pressed, discarded, against the walls. Like Captain Simpson and John himself, they were all wearing battle dress in desert colors with no rank insignia: just their names and the red and pale green shoulder flash of the Northumberland Fusiliers, a unit that technically no longer existed. Seated nearest to the door- but not, John noted, with his back to it- was a black man with medium-light skin, narrow eyes, and hair buzzed so short as to be almost nonexistent. Across from him was a pale guy with a thin face, jutting chin and a mop of brunette hair almost-but-not-quite long enough to defy regulations. And next to _him_ was a black-haired giant. They all affably sized John up as he was sizing them up. He smiled and dropped into the nearest free chair. "Gents," he said.

Simpson didn't bother to sit, lecturing them from the front of the room while brandishing a manila folder. "Alfa and Charlie teams are going to be playing your baddies for this outing. One of them has been picked as a high-value target you need to bag and retrieve unharmed, while the others will be his bodyguards and staff whom you need to neutralize." Simpson pulled a photograph out of his folder and dropped it on the table before the giant, who studied it before passing it around. "We're going to assume ground insertion, though you'll choose your own approach. Trooper Feld will be team leader for the purpose of this exercise. All right, you lot talk amongst yourselves, I'm going to want your initial plan and supply req in-" he ostentatiously checked his wristwatch- "two hours. Carry on."

"Er-" John started. Everyone in the room, Simpson included, was giving him the _oh god, the new lad's talking_ look, but he ignored it. "There's no- further specifics, sir?"

Simpson just raised his eyebrows. "Carry on, trooper." He walked briskly out, leaving the manila folder behind.

"Right," said the giant. "Shut the door, mate." As John obliged, he continued, "I'm John Feld. That over there is Kevin Griffiths, and this sweet young lad next to me is Sebastian Moran."

"Blow it out your arse, you round-faced ponce," the brunette suggested. He snaked a hand out to drag the folder closer and started flipping through its contents.

"John Watson," John said. "Is this just an exercise, then?"

"Nah," Griffiths said. "I've done a couple of these before. We make a plan for the op, and if it's not too appallingly stupid they let us run it."

Feld nodded. "Then they tell us what we fucked up."

"Unless one of us gets shot, in which case it's pretty obvious," said Griffiths.

John's eyebrows raised involuntarily. "Live fire training on day one?" His new teammates cast him wary looks, and he hurried to clarify. "Just can't believe they're letting the newbies plan it."

"Scared, Watson?" jeered Moran.

John shrugged. "No one's specifically said, but I'm guessing shooting a squaddie is a good way to get RTU'd." As if he was afraid of getting shot himself, Christ. You couldn't function if you wasted brainpower worrying about things like that.

"There's an easy enough way to prevent it," Griffiths reassured him.

"Oh yeah?" John said.

Moran's smirk morphed into a shark-like grin. "Yeah," he said. "Don't fuck up."

* * *

November Foxtrot training was the best damn time that John had had in ages. There was more of the same they got in the SAS: building assaults, hostage rescue, interrogation (both sides of the table), hands-on training with weapons from boot knives to RPGs, wilderness survival, mountaineering, parachute insertion, recon, infiltration, sabotage. Then there was the weird stuff: identity creation, assassination, diving, base jumping, memory training. Years later, John would just nod when Sherlock first referenced his "mind palace," because the NF had taught him all about them. The troopers practiced mapping useful info- Morse Code, BATCO callsigns, phonetic alphabets- onto detailed recollections of childhood homes or Army training facilities or British towns. When they didn't have any handy lists to memorize, they practiced on decks of playing cards.

It was all ongoing, too, even after the initial training period was over. The team would spend two weeks hunting Al Qaeda on the Pakistan border and then a week at Camp Bastion with an ex-IRA man the powers that be had flown in, learning how to wire and defuse car bombs. When there were no outside instructors, they taught each other: Jack tutored them in Pashto, Seb taught them how to spot the structural weak points in a multistory building, Kevin showed them how to use the SATCOM equipment, John taught them how to improvise in dealing with a gunshot wound with no real medical supplies.

The Novembers were weirdly informal in a way that John had never previously encountered in the military, and it wasn't just the fact that they never wore proper uniforms or insignia. They were taught that if captured, it's always better to conceal which men were the officers, but more than that it was a shared sense that they were all troopers together, all brothers. In NF, the Major was always the Major, but the captain who headed their 16-man troop was Cap or just Boss, and everyone else was just their first name. 

There was trouble over the Johns of course. There was only one Seb in the whole 64-man outfit, and one other Kevin in their troop of sixteen, but he went by Minty for some reason so that was okay. Having three Johns in their troop, especially with two in one team, was just damned confusing. John from Alfa fire team was one of the oldest men in the unit and had been John for longer than most of them had been in the Army. John Feld became Jack pretty quickly- sometimes Giant Jack. And John Watson- well.

"Why does Miro always call our John 'Joe Vaughn'?" Seb asked one evening during training. Miro was Miroslave Kovac, a shy and unfailingly polite Serbian veteran who was their instructor in urban warfare.

" _Jovan_ ," Jack corrected. "It's his name, stupid." He was reading a copy of the Quran- in Arabic, he said his pronunciation was okay but his reading comp was rubbish- on the sofa next to Kevin, who was thumbing through one of his signals handbooks. John was sitting at a ridiculously tiny study desk, memorizing the street map of the seaside village where his family holidayed when he was eight. They were ostensibly decompressing after an afternoon of classroom instruction, but Seb was the only one of them not even _trying_ to do something productive.

"Isn't," Seb said. He flipped himself around so his knees hung over the chair-back and his head hung down from the seat.

Jack rolled his eyes. "Jovan is the Serbian version of John. Like Ivan, or Juan."

"Jovan," Seb said slowly, as if tasting the name. "Jovan, Jovan, Jovan. Nah, not _English_ enough." He grinned upside-down at Kev.

"Kiss my black, Irish arse," Kev said, and chucked a pencil at Seb, who kept grinning.

"I don't know what you're bitching about, isn't your name Latin?" John asked Seb.

"Yep," Jack said. "Latin by way of Greek."

"Joe, Joe, Joe," Seb was chanting. "Too American."

"I had a cousin called Jo," Kev said. "It was short for Joanna." Seb and Jack snickered. "You'd make a _lovely_ girl, John," Kev added, and John flipped him off.

"Vaughn," Seb said speculatively.

"Nope," John said. "And anyway you're mispronouncing it."

"Yep," Jack agreed.

Seb scowled, and John ducked his head over his map. He happened to know Vaughn meant _short_. John was keeping his mouth shut, and if Jack knew what was good for him he'd keep his closed too.

"Joooooovaaannn," Seb drawled.

"This is really getting fucking irritating here," Jack complained.

"I'm out of shit to throw at him," Kev said.

"No, I think I'm on to something. Joooovvvvvvan. Joooovvvv. Jove." Seb squinted at John.

"Well it's better than Jo," John said resignedly.

"Jove is another name for Jupiter," Kev declared. "God of the sky, lightning and thunder, weather...king of the Roman gods." They all stared at him, and he squared his shoulders. "What? I took an A-level in Classical Civilization."

"If I was the god of the sky, I'd stop it from raining so bloody much when we're humping those damn rucks to hell and back," John pointed out.

"No, I like it," said Seb, turning himself upright again and stretching a mile of leg into the center of the room. "Lightning and thunder."

"He's also the god of oaths, I think," Kev added.

"Yeah?" John asked, propping his chin on his hands.

"Yeah, you'd swear your oath to Jupiter," Kev said. "I guess the theory was, if you broke your word, he'd come down from wherever and kick your arse."

"Olympus?" Seb suggested.

"That's Greeks, you ignorant fuck," Kev said. At that point Seb launched himself at Kev, and the discussion ended in impromptu wrestling.

But the next day, John tipped Seb out of his bunk- because the bastard always slept till the last second and made them all late- and Seb said, "Fucking _sod off_ , Jove!" And he had a new name.

* * *

Seb started the file going around the circle and began scrawling on a portable whiteboard in his lap.

"Why is it always a straight kill when Seb's in charge?" Kev asked, pawing through aerial recon photos. "Have you guys noticed that?"

"Probably they figure anything more complicated would make him trip over his own bootlaces," John suggested, taking the file out of Kev's hand. Photos, a man in his late 40s and two younger men. All bearded, the older man wearing a _pakul_ and sporting a series of distinctive pockmarks on his face. "Ugly bastard."

"Who, the target or Seb?" Kev passed the aerial photos over.

"The target, assuming this is the target," said John. "We have photos, Seb, are you going to stop scratching at that and talk us through the mission, or what?"

"Yeah, da Vinci, this isn't fucking art history last time I checked," Kev jeered.

Seb capped his marker and looked up, feigning supreme indifference. "Just waiting for you ladies to finish nattering," he said.

"It's like the low-budget, no-talent version of Fry and Laurie," Jack said, finally getting tired enough of John's close inspection to take the file out of his hand.

"So is the older guy the target or what?" John asked.

"Yeah," Seb said. "His name's Ghazan Shah Zadran. He's a big wheel among the southern insurgents- at one point he was part of the Haqqani network, but lately he mostly coordinates between the Afghani and Paki Taliban. The intel says the Taliban are really pissed about the US drone campaign in Pakistan-"

"Well _duh_ ," said Kevin, rolling his eyes at the same moment Jack laughed and John muttered, "That's hardly intel."

"You wanted me to brief and I'm briefing, shut up," Seb snapped. "The Taliban are _increasingly_ pissed, okay? There's been a lot of chatter about retaliation and Ghazan is in Khost Province acting as a go-between. He's an HVT, and we want him. Oh, and incidentally, you arseholes were wrong. It's grab and go, not shoot to kill."

John whistled between his teeth. "Khost Province is hot. Way hot."

"Duh," Kev said again. "Why else would they send us?"

Jack studiously turned over sheet after sheet in the file, eyes scanning quickly. "This is huge."

John nodded agreement. The Pakistan-Afghanistan border was a tangled mess, and that was one of the major reasons why the southern provinces remained Taliban strongholds. The right intel could cut through the tangle and expose insurgent activity in a way that let the good guys make lasting gains.

"Right. So." Seb turned the whiteboard so they could all see. "This is the compound where Ghazan stays when he passes through- apparently a cousin of his lives here. His travel plans call for him to be there in three days, and lucky us, we're the closest team right now." They all listened attentively. "He travels light, we can expect his cousins to be there- those are the other two blokes in the file- and two or three bodyguards for security. Probably packing rifles, they're not involved in any attacks themselves and the house is not a weapons dump, so they're not likely to have anything heavier than that. Like Jove said, this whole area is red hot. With that and the fact that we're going to have to get the target out after, I'm thinking ground insert."

"Two cars?" suggested Kev. "Or one in, two out."

Jack shook his head. "No way. I can't even fucking fit in the driver's seat of those goddamn Toyotas."

"And we're not messing about moving equipment between cars, especially if we have a prisoner," John said. "Van's the only way to go."

"I can get us a van," Seb said.

"Can you get us some blackface?" Kev asked. "Every time we go out I know we're going to get made, what with the giant white guy playing our front man."

"Sure, Kev, you can drive, and then you can also talk to the insurgents when one of the militias stop the car to yell at you in Pashto- oh wait, you don't speak Pashto, do you?"

"Guys," John said. "I don't love sitting in the back of a van in 110 degree heat either, but it's our only real choice and you know it."

"Green zone's at least half a day's drive out," said Seb, scrawling that in the corner of his whiteboard diagram.

"Do we have to escort the target beyond that?" Jack asked.

"Nope, we're just the extraction team," Seb said.

"Good," Kev said.

"Equipment," Seb announced. 

"Everybody in body armor before we start,” John said. “Don't argue with me Jack, I don't care about verisimilitude.”

Seb was nodding agreement, so Jack just rolled his eyes at being overruled. “Sidearms, rifles- nothing heavy, we don't need full kit and it's too hard to hide if anybody searches the van when we're on the way in” Seb said.

"Couple flash-bangs might be a good idea," Kev said.

"Right." Seb nodded to John. "Jove, make us a list, would you? What else?"

"Clothing," Jack said. "Obvious, I know, but it should go on the list."

"Yeah," John said, noting it down.

"What about signals?" Seb asked Kevin.

"Not much point to taking a manpack," Kev said, thumbing his lower lip. "We're not going to have backup anywhere on-site, yeah? No air support? Nothing?"

"So I'm told," Seb said.

"Okay, just the personal radios then," Kev said.

"And if those fail, we can just yell really loud," John said, grinning. Kevin flicked two fingers up at him.

“Shut it girls,” Seb said, as Jack flipped open a road map of southeastern Afghanistan and began to spread it open on the table. “Ideas first, arguments after. Let’s talk route.”

* * *

The insertion was beautifully smooth, just as they planned it. They did in fact get stopped at a roadblock by one of the local militias, but the men didn’t have any dogs and they didn’t want to search the van; they just hit Jack up for a bribe, then let him drive on. By the time it was full dark, they had pulled the van off the road a few hundred meters from the village where their target was staying. The van was close enough for them to rush the HVT into it for a quick getaway, but far enough away that no one should come outside to figure out why an unexpected car was pulling into this rural village at night.

They checked their weapons under the dome light in the back of the van, pulled dark balaclavas over their faces to finish anonymizing themselves, then shut the light off and slipped one by one into the rapidly cooling evening. They crouched on the opposite side of the van from the road, getting their night vision back, then started the rapid jog down to the village and the silent, waiting compound.

Another pause outside the front door, listening to the muted chatter of voices inside, before Seb- third back in line- signaled _go_. Kev whipped a flash bang into the room ahead of them and they were moving. Kev and John in first, clearing the front room where two men had been eating with their rifles leaned up against the table beside them. Kev and John had them face-down and zip-tied almost immediately, verified that neither was the HVT, then fell back in behind Seb and Jack to work deeper into the house. The guys in the front room started yelling from behind- shouting _arbaki_ , the local term for militia.

Kev and Jack took the back room and John and Seb went up the stairs. Two more rooms on the top floor, one for each of them to cover. There were four more guys upstairs, huddled together in the room on the rear side of the house. No women or kids, which certainly didn't make John sorry, but it was a bit strange. There were women's clothes up here, and this was obviously a family's house. They might have been forced out recently, but usually militants would just move straight on in. The local women weren't unsympathetic to their cause, and it was better camouflage if ordinary activities continued while the men were staying here.

John barked the usual commands, in Pashto- don't move, on the ground- and at first it seemed everything was going to be as smooth as expected, with all the men scrambling to hit the floor. And then one of them started firing. John fell back at once, rifle up and firing free, but more as covering fire while he concentrated on getting out of the direct line of sight of the insurgents. Seb was behind him, firing into the room over the men's heads. John drew a bead on the man who had started the shooting: he was firing from a prone position with some kind of handgun, and unlike John and Seb he was aiming to kill. The guy was bearded, but too young and light-skinned to be their HVT, so John exhaled, squeezed the trigger, and clipped him in the side of the head.

Panicked shouting in Pashto erupted among the remaining occupants of the room. Seb stopped firing and John yelled again for the men to not move. But in the moment of ceasefire, the man on the floor nearest Seb and John got his legs under him and executed a sort of low tackle, grabbing Seb around the knees. Seb went over backwards, striking with the butt of his rifle at the insurgent's head, and John instinctively brought his gun over to cover, but realized immediately that he couldn't safely fire without hitting his squaddie. As he jumped in and grabbed the man's clothes with his free hand to drag him off, the other two men scrambled for their rifles, propped up against the wall.

John slung his rifle back and grabbed the hair of the insurgent wrestling with Seb. Pulling with both hands, he succeeded in dragging the man back just as Seb ripped his combat knife out of its sheath and slammed it into his opponent's chest. John immediately let go and used both hands to shove Seb up and back through the doorway, just before the firing started from inside the room. The rounds punched easily through the thin walls, and Seb and John tumbled halfway down the stairs for better cover, meeting Kev, who was on his way up. "All right?" Kev asked.

"Fine," Seb panted. "Crazy son of a bitch tried to dump tackle me."

"Two left in there," John said. He propped his rifle up on the floorboards and sprayed bullets at an upward angle through the open doorway, hoping to disguise the fact that he was firing from floor level.

"We clear downstairs?" Seb asked.

Kev nodded once. "Jack's covering the guys- there was just one in the back room, one of the target's cousins." Seven in the house.

"Okay," Seb said. "Target's gotta be one of our heroes back there. We're going to cover them from here, Kev, go around the outside and make sure they don't go through the windows. 60 seconds." 

"Right." Kev headed back downstairs, and Seb pulled a flash-bang out of his belt to hold ready. 

He didn't even get to a count of five.

The rattle of automatic gunfire erupted outside the house, the sudden break in the silence making John flinch in surprise. Men's voices joined the sound of the guns, nothing distinct or intelligible, just shouting. There was an answering burst from the upper story, and more bullets splintered the floor near the stairway where Seb and John were crouched. John threw back another couple bursts just to prove that the stairway hadn't been abandoned, and Seb flicked the transmit switch on his radio with his thumb. "Kev, you clear?" Thumb off, no response other than more gunfire from outside, and an answering chatter of Jack returning fire.

"Think they got him." Jack's voice echoed oddly, filtering up the stairs and over the radio at the same time. With the channel open, the guns sounded like they were everywhere.

Seb cursed roundly. "Stay here," he ordered John, and thumped back down the stairs. The telltale whine of an incoming projectile almost coincided with the explosion as it blasted through the side of the house. The concussive force made the entire rickety building shiver on its foundation, and the upper story shifted sickeningly sideways. John fell down four or five steps and landed on Seb, who luckily was solidly balanced enough that he didn't fall himself as a result. Most of the front wall of the building, the one that had the door, was gone, the place where it had been fogged by dust and smoke. The ceiling was sagging, and it looked like a good kick at what was left of the wall would cave the whole thing in. Jack wasn't visible anywhere.

The scramble back up the stairs was the sort you didn't plan and couldn't analyze till long after. John was never sure whether he had been dragging Seb, or Seb had been pushing him. Nor was he sure who armed the flash bang, but John knows he was the one who grabbed it out of Seb's hand and flung it into the room where the two armed insurgents were waiting for them along their only line of retreat from the enemy that was coming through the front wall of the house.

Success was no longer a matter of extracting the target quickly and quietly. Stuck between two hostile forces, half their team dead, the question was rapidly becoming whether or not they could extract themselves, much less the target. John cracked one of the men in the face with his rifle-butt and slammed him bodily to the floor. His resistance was hampered by the disorientation brought on by the flash-bang, and John gave the man another bash with the gun. He could see the cheekbone and eye socket crumple under the blow, but he was so high on adrenaline that he barely felt the impact that shuddered up his arms.

When he looked up, Seb had subdued the other remaining man and was turning out his pockets. "Target's dead," he said flatly. "God damn it. Check those guys." 

"So much for traveling light," John said. "Where did all this come from?" He dutifully dropped to a crouch and checked the pulse of the man whose face he had just smashed in before frisking him. No extra weapons, nothing in his pockets- no id, but also no money, papers, cigarettes, nothing.

"What a goddamn cluster," Seb muttered. "Fucking intel!" He moved back over to check the man he had stabbed earlier. Downstairs there was another small explosion that made the building shiver, another couple bursts of gunfire, and panicked shouting in Pashto- possibly from the men Jack and Kev had secured in the back room.

John moved to the last guy- the light-skinned man with half his head blown off, who had first started firing and touched the whole mess off. His handgun was half under him- Sig Sauer, P226. Nice gun and looking very new- but then, there was a lot of trade in handguns over the Pakistan border, so probably not that rare an item in this province. Going through his clothes, John could feel the hard lump of an underarm holster, and moved his jacket to get a look at it. That was more unusual- insurgents didn't usually bother with holsters at all. John was starting to get an uneasy feeling low in his gut. He leaned over to study the man's face again- light skin, yeah, black beard, good teeth. Unusually good teeth. John pushed back his lips with one gloved finger and saw at least one silver filling, on one of the lower molars. And what looked like scarring on the gum line at the back of the mouth. Wisdom tooth removal?

"Damn it," Seb said again. He strode back over to the door of the room and pitched his second- and last- flash bang down the stairs into the main room. There was a muted thump of the detonation, and the noise of men stumbling and kicking through rubble.

John barely noticed- he was ripping the man's shirt open down the front, patting him down as he went for any more objects, documents, anything. His chest was significantly paler than his face. Farmer's tan- not conclusive. Seb moved back behind John, checking the window's viability as an escape route. John got out his knife and ripped up the right sleeve, checking the arm- his forearms weren't tanned either, even more suggestive, but then he got to the upper arm, and-

"Oh fuck," John said, leaning back on his heels as the uneasy feeling blossomed into full-fledged nausea. "Fuck me."

"What?" Seb demanded, walking back over to look. "What is it?"

It was a tattoo of the United States Marine Corps seal.

At least a dozen things happened within the space of the next second and a half, but John only remembered four of them with any real clarity.

Flinging his hands up to head level as the first man came through the door with his rifle up and ready -

The bolt of pain slamming into his left shoulder, making his hand spasm and release the combat knife he was still holding-

Seb behind him, screaming, "Don't shoot, we're _fucking English_!"

And the man who just shot him saying, with an unmistakable American accent, "Aw, shit."

* * *

When John finally woke, it was in hospital with a fucked up shoulder, a morphine drip, and a block of uncertain memories that it would be overly optimistic to call "dreamlike." They told him the bullet punched through his armor but would have probably ended in his chest cavity if the armor hadn't slowed it down. They told him it just missed his subclavian artery. They told him that he'd picked up MRSA before he got out of Afghanistan. They told him he was lucky to be alive.

On day two of consciousness, they sent Captain Simpson in to see him. Their matching smiles were wide and genuine. "I'm bloody glad to see a familiar face," John said. "Is this my debriefing, then?"

"Something like that," Simpson said, closing the door behind him. He was wearing battle fatigues with shoulder flash but no rank insignia, which was typically what they all wore on base. His clothes were regulation-neat, but he looked rather worn around the eyes and mouth, with a touch of stubble on his jaw. He pulled up a chair next to John's bed and sat down heavily.

"Is Seb back on base, Cap?" John asked. The staff hadn't been able to tell him anything, except that no one of Seb's description had been to check on him. "He wasn't injured, was he?"

"No," Simpson said shortly. "Not injured. How much do you remember?"

"Everything up to being shot," John said. "My recall's fine."

"Then you know Griffiths and Feld are dead." Simpson's voice was matter-of-fact.

John nodded once. "Yeah, I figured- yes." A brief stab of almost physical grief, and John instinctually pushed it down before it could show in his face. Regret and sadness weren't feelings you could afford to linger over in this line of work; you had to pack them away until a more appropriate time, which was never in action, never in public, and certainly never in front of your direct superiors.

There was still a lengthy pause as both Simpson and John looked down at their laps. A spontaneous moment of silence for lost comrades, that ended when Simpson shifted in his chair and spoke again. "Hell of a thing," he said. "Two of the men in that house were Americans, you know."

"I realized one was a marine, near the end there," John said. Odd that Simpson was giving him details. Usually you debriefed first, to make sure the reporting trooper's memories weren't going to be influenced, then they gave you the after action report. If you got one at all, which wasn't often.

"The other was CIA," Simpson said. "Working away at Ghazan, before we showed up." 

John felt sick. Not just Kev and Jack dead, but two Coalition guys too. Friendly fire was the worst. Not to mention with the CIA involved, and all the backup the Americans had on site, that must have been one hell of an operation that their squad had blundered into and cocked up. "Does Seb know?" John asked. A look of confusion from Simpson. "Colonel Moran," John clarified.

Simpson frowned. "Not a colonel any more," he said. "Not after a fuckup like that."

"Cap, it wasn't his fault," John said. "The intel-"

"Who else's fault was it for taking you off-mission?" Simpson demanded. "The orders called for intel gathering, not for a bloodbath. If you hadn't been in that house in the first place-"

Wait; stop. "The orders called for us to pull an HVT out of the house and smuggle him to an extraction point," John pointed out.

"I'm sure that's what he told you at briefing, Watson. No one's trying to say you or Feld or Griffiths had a hand in this. You planned the mission based on what Moran told you, but you didn't see Moran's orders." Simpson scowled darkly at each repetition of Seb's name. " _He_ was the one who decided snatching the HVT would be more exciting and impressive a stunt than just recon."

John was reeling. He thought he had seen the orders. They had been in the briefing packet, hadn't they? Sometimes they were and sometimes not. They were directed to the team leader, but frequently they'd be read by everyone. Just for additional insight, not because anyone anticipated a team leader would relay fraudulent orders. Seb much preferred blowing shit up to intel-gathering, but he would never put his mates at risk that way, surely. "That doesn't sound like him, Cap."

"Nobody expects this kind of betrayal, Watson," Simpson said. "It's always tough to figure it out." John tried again to imagine Seb going rogue, planning a lie to tell his team, leading them all into a potential mess. But no, Seb had been just as surprised as John when things went tits up. Hadn't he? "Hell, if the Americans hadn't been physically inside the house, if Moran hadn't decided to execute them, he might have gotten the HVT out and convinced the brass to cover him in glory instead of-"

Wait, no, that was _definitely_ wrong. "Execute? Cap, the marine at least was killed in action."

"Moran stabbed the CIA man with his combat knife," Simpson said. "That was done as the house was secured, sure. But the marine was shot in the head by Moran. You secured the house, the American confronted you, and Moran realized he needed to shut him up."

Those few stark sentences painted a picture of a man desperately trying to fix an unraveling plan. It was simple, matter of fact, and so wrong that John couldn't listen to another word. "That's not how it went," he said. "Did- did Seb tell you that?" From the picture Simpson painted, whoever they blamed for this mess was in for rather a lot of trouble. It was possible that Seb had tried to spare him, taking the lion's share of blame for himself.

"He didn't have to," Simpson said. "The Afghani survivors testified to what happened."

But the men upstairs were all dead. That meant- "They're lying," John said with relief. That made a lot more sense. "Those men were downstairs when it happened. We secured them first and went up, and went up to secure the four men on the upper floor. That's when the marine started shooting. I shot him, and then the second man went for Seb, and- what?"

Simpson was slowly shaking his head. "I guess your recall isn't as good as you thought," he said. "You'll have to tell that to the doctors."

"Cap, I remember perfectly," John said. "Those men couldn't have seen, they were downstairs. It was just a huge mess upstairs, it didn't touch off until the marine pulled his handgun. I shot him. Seb was behind me."

"Watson, the ballistics guy matched the bullet to Moran's sidearm," Simpson said. John was struck dumb by the obvious stupidity of this. The bullet from the rifle wouldn't look anything _like_ the bullet from one of their sidearms. "I know you don't want to believe this of Moran- God knows none of us did- and you must have a fair bit of time missing from the fever that laid you out after you were shot. But these are the facts."

"I know that time is gone, but my memory of the fight is very clear," John said. "I need to talk to the Major. This is all wrong, we've got to fix it before anyone takes action. If you get me a pen and a pad I'll go ahead and write my after-action report now. If you file it for me, we can-"

Simpson was shaking his head again. "Too late for that. There've already been hearings, the evidence has been reviewed. And frankly, Watson, your dodgy memory is not going to be enough to counter the rest of the evidence. I'm sorry, I know you two were closer than most, and this is tough to hear. But I thought you should hear it from me first."

John's dry throat choked off any more protests. Simpson clearly wasn't going to listen. He couldn't change anything anyway, John would have to talk to the Major. "I appreciate that, sir."

"Rest up, Watson," Simpson told him. "I know Major Anders wants to talk to you, but it'll keep till you're discharged from this place."

John nodded dumbly. It wasn't till Simpson was off down the hallway that John realized that despite the implications and hints, Simpson hadn't actually told him what they'd done with Seb.

* * *

No one contacted John about debriefing or asked for his report. Which was odd, and just confirmed Simpson's statement that everything was considered done and dusted by the powers that be. John focused on healing and physical therapy instead, resigning himself to the notion that he couldn't help Seb until he was capable of looking after himself again.

It was weeks more before he was well enough to report. 

"How's the shoulder?" Anders asked brightly, motioning John toward the extra chair in his office. The Major was a bluff, hearty type who always spoke to his subordinates with a paternal air; even those who, like John, were less than a decade his junior.

"Good, sir. Excellent." John tried not to jog his arm against the back of the chair and put lie to this claim. He wasn't an idiot, he knew that his injury had left him in no shape to be redeployed, and Anders obviously didn't give a toss about getting his report on the disaster that caused said injury. So he suspected that today's topic wasn't going to be much fun. Nor was the topic of Seb, but John had to wait for the chance to bring that up. One didn't bull into a CO's office and start demanding answers.

"Well. You may have guessed, Watson, that I called you here to discuss your reassignment."

"I- yes, sir." John glanced down and away. 

Anders' voice gentled. "Son, I hate to lose you, I do. But your left arm is fucked. You've already had a month of physio and it hasn't made near enough difference for me to consider putting you back on the ground. Not to mention that tremor." He nodded at John's left hand, which had started to shake, unnoticed. 

John flushed and clenched his fingers tightly on the arm of the chair. He knew, realistically, that he couldn't be redeployed at this point. The idea of reassignment was sickening, but at least he could console himself that it was only temporary. "What did you have in mind, sir?"

"Command posting." In other words, desk jockey. John fought his urge to make a face. "Not as exciting as what you're used to."

"No, sir, I can't say it is," John admitted. 

Anders chuckled. "It's important work," he pointed out, and John was forced to nod, even if in his private opinion it was important work more suited to bureaucrats than combat veterans. "And it's a good spot to finish out your career."

John almost nodded along again before he registered the words. "What- sir, I'm not even close to aging out of combat. With intensive PT I should recover nearly full function in-"

Anders was shaking his head. "Like I said, I hate to lose you. But I've read your medical. Nearly full function isn't enough, you're never going to pass fitness to redeploy with the regiment."

John felt sick, all his hopes crashing. Somewhere deep down, he knew that this was what all his doctors had been trying to tell him: to stop living in denial, to recognize that he was never going to be the same as before he was shot. But this was the first time he had been made to actually face it. "With respect, sir," he got out, "I don't think I can stand flying a desk for that long."

"Well, if you straighten out that shoulder you can always go back in a support role," Anders said. His voice was still too damn jolly for this conversation- piling it on, definitely fake enthusiasm. John didn't know what that signified. "You're still a doctor."

John flinched back as if slapped. "You want to _RTU me_?" he asked. It was unheard of. Novembers changed postings, they lateraled to other special operations units, they aged out of combat and switched careers, but they did _not_ go back to their original unit.

"I wouldn't think of it like that," Anders said. "I'm trying to help you, Watson. You want to go back on the ground, that's how you do it, because it can't be through us."

"Three tours and you want to fucking RTU me!" John was starting to lose control of his temper. "I'm a goddamn trooper!"

"Watch your mouth, Watson!" All the jocular friendliness dropped out of Anders' voice, and he was the Major again, not this overenthusiastic space alien John had been talking to. "Any other unit would just hand you a medical discharge. You want to keep serving, and I respect that. That's what we're all about. But there's a limit to where you can go in your condition."

His _condition_ , like he's some kind of defective. He gritted his teeth and controlled his voice. "Then lateral me to 23 SAS. I can do training and aid, I can do close protection." Probably not quite true, as even reservists had to pass fitness standards, and they did recon and humped field gear as often as they handed out medical supplies or shadowed visiting VIPs. Anders was already shaking his head. "Or if you're that desperate to keep me out of Afghanistan, send me back to London and second me to the SIS. That's where I'd end up when I aged out anyway." That _was_ true: ninety-five percent of the squadron who failed to die in active service "retired" to secret service wetwork and gave it a second go.

"No," Anders said.

So much fury welled up that John was momentarily choked into silence. Then, watching Anders' flat, forbidding expression, he suddenly got it. God, he was thick. "You're fucking burying me," he said. "You're burying me like you buried Colonel Moran."

"Sebastian Moran is no longer your concern!" Anders snapped.

 _Thank you for answering that question, Major,_ John thought. The lack of title was a giveaway. Seb's punishment hadn't just been demotion, then: he'd been drummed out.

"Those are your options, Watson," Anders said. "HQ, or the Corps if you'd rather be back on the ground." Which, he didn't need to say, wasn't guaranteed. There were plenty of Army hospitals in England and elsewhere in Europe that needed staffing too.

John could see it all, now. It was obvious that the reason the last op had fallen apart was because they had no idea the Americans were already on the HVT, present at the location in force. With everything so fucked up, it was equally obvious that the only way to minimize the black eye the Army would receive over the snafu was to shift blame from the brass to a field guy; and it had to be fast and quiet, bury the mess as soon as possible. Kev and Jack were dead, and John was lying in hospital fighting for his life, which meant Seb had won the blame lottery.

Now John was awake, and able to refute their bullshit story. But they'd already absolved him in the process of blaming Seb, so they couldn't screw him the same way. They wanted him under the regiment's control, but somewhere they could keep their eyes on him- or else sent back to the RAMC, and that WOULD discredit him, because everyone would assume it was a punishment. The pause extended for long moments as John considered how to get out of the box.

John heard the voice of his father from twenty-five years ago, teaching him to play poker. Interspersed with lectures on hand values and bluffing were the bits of advice on how to spot card sharps and the most common ways a cheater would mark a deck. _The only way to beat a crooked game is to refuse to play_ , his dad said. That wasn't Seb's philosophy; he'd try to beat a man at his own rigged game, then start a fistfight when he couldn't. That's probably why Seb had ended up with a dishonorable discharge, wiped off the map. 

"Respectfully, sir," John said slowly. "I think I'd rather take a medical discharge."

Anders looked honestly startled. "Watson, are you sure that's what you want? I know this seems hard, but no one wants you sent home. Maybe you'd like some more time to think about it. A command role is a perfectly respectable option.”

NF’s motto was meant to be translated as “Endure together or die alone.” But Latin, Jack had once told John, was a flexible language. The motto could just as easily mean “Endure alone, die together.” 

Or “Destroy together, suffer alone.”

“ _Socii patiantur pereant soli_ , sir," John said woodenly. "I'll take the medical."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone's interested, Kev Griffiths would be played by Ashley Walters, and Jack Reid would be played by Daniel Cudmore. Shut up, I can have a Canadian if I want to.


	2. Chapter 2

_2 days ASH (After Sherlock Holmes)_

The first thing John did was move out of Baker Street.

It turned out that two days was his limit: two full days of sitting inside, listening to the press outside knocking and yelling and hanging on the bell, two full nights of staring at Sherlock's chair replaying his jump over and over, two eternities of being reminded of Sherlock by every thing he saw and every breath he took. He was settled into a new flat before Sherlock's body was even in the ground.

He went back to pack up Sherlock's things though. No one else was going to do it, evidently; it was possible that's what all Mycroft's calls were about, but John wasn't going to talk to him to find out. Anyway, John found he didn't like the idea of some hired goons of Mycroft's handling all Sherlock's possessions. The only thing worse was the thought of Mrs. Hudson climbing all those stairs and having to lug armfuls of books and clothing and mold cultures, alone and surrounded by memories of a man that was more to her than just a tenant. So John spent a long, excruciating day binning experiments in progress and packing boxes, using a newly-purchased marking pen to label them in permanent block capitals: books, lab, notes, clothing. When he was done, he wrote Mycroft's number on a loose sheet of paper, slid it under Mrs. Hudson's door, and left.

He didn't take anything with him. Sometimes his wild mood swings took him to maudlin places, and he would wish he had kept some memento to hold on to. But really, what was there that could encapsulate Sherlock Holmes' existence? He was better off with just his own things in his own bare flat, no obvious touchstones to sear him every time his glance lighted on them.

The media left off after he'd ignored them for a while; the people he knew took longer. Lestrade called a lot. Mrs. Hudson invited him round. Mike Stamford asked him to the pub. Even Molly Hooper, who left tearful voicemails that he deleted without listening to, after the first one. It was easier. He didn't want to be pitied. He didn't want to reminisce. He didn't want to be told it would get better. Deep down, he was afraid that if he heard enough about the fake construct-Sherlock that people had created, he might start to believe it; that he'd wake up one day and his memories of Sherlock would have been replaced by someone else's.

He talked to his therapist. He talked to the people who called him in for job interviews. He talked to Sherlock's gravestone.

John visited Sherlock's grave nearly every day, at first. He had very little to do, and it gave him somewhere to go: a definite destination, rather than just aimless wandering. And then, he missed having someone to talk to, argue with, shout at. His days were mostly silent, and sometimes the silence clawed at him. Talking to the grave wasn't the same, but at least he could do it without thinking he was losing his grip on reality. Somehow in the wake of the "fake genius's suicide" John felt almost as if his reputation was tied to Sherlock's. If John was crazy or deluded, it might justify the story that Sherlock had fooled him.

"Hello, John," he heard one afternoon as he sat leaning against the back side of the stone. He'd stopped talking and dropped into introspection, and so hadn't heard anyone approach. He glanced up: Lestrade, wearing his overcoat over jeans and a button-down. He sat to John's left, leaning back against the trunk of the massive pine and stretching his legs in front of him.

"I should go," John said immediately, averting his gaze. He pulled his legs up, preparatory to standing.

"No, don't," Lestrade said quickly. "I came to see you."

"Oh," John said.

"You've not been to Baker Street, and Mrs. Hudson said she didn't have your new address," Lestrade said. "You aren't answering your phone. I couldn't find you."

"Well you have now," John said. He stared straight ahead of him, refusing to make eye contact. "Not the best detective work, I must say," he said, with a little nasty thrill. He wanted to add _What would Sherlock think?_ but he didn't think he could get the words out without his voice cracking.

"Well I'm not a detective at the moment, am I?" The bitter edge to the words made John look up at Lestrade, who was also gazing into the middle distance.

"What?"

Lestrade finally made eye contact. "I'm suspended. With pay, which is something I suppose. It's been in the papers, I thought-" Lestrade stopped before he finished _you'd have read about it._

John found his lips curling into a smile against his will. Maybe Sherlock was right about Lestrade being an idiot. "Sod the papers," he said flatly.

Lestrade paused a moment. "All the DIs who worked with him are suspended, pending review of the cases." Lestrade huffed a bit of a stale laugh, the barest _ha_. "Your government at work."

"You don't think they're going to find anything untoward then," John said, trying to load each individual word with sarcasm. "No crimes secretly perpetrated by the fake-" His voice cracked and he had to stop, closing his eyes against the pricking of tears. He kept his face a mask, refused to wipe his eyes. This was humiliating enough.

"Don't be stupid," Lestrade said. His voice was so harsh that John opened his eyes to glance at him, seeing a tight rictus of forced control that must match his own expression. "I was bloody there and so were you. We know there was nothing fake about what he did."

Part of John is relieved at that, but it's overtaken by a surge of fury. "Well that's not what you said that night, was it, when you were lining up behind Donovan and her load of-"

"Come off it, John," Lestrade said. "It was a possibility, we had to rule it out. That's how policing works, you know. It's not all chase scenes and takedowns and dramatic bloody reveals. And you can't ignore a line of questioning because of personal-"

"Personal!" John practically hooted. "Oh, that's a laugh. With Donovan gloating-"

"But it wasn't her whose nose you bloodied, was it?" Lestrade said sharply. "None of us were at our best that night. None of us."

John ducked his chin to his chest and turned his face away. "What do you want?"

"I just wanted to see how you were," Lestrade said. "To let you know...well. You have my number, if you need- someone to talk to. Go down the pub with. Whatever."

John forced a laugh. "I have a therapist, thanks."

"Not what I meant," Lestrade said. "I had a mate once, who- you know. And we all said after how no one ever thought he'd do it, but you still feel like you should have seen it-"

"No," John snapped. "I didn't kill him. He didn't kill himself. It was fucking Moriarty, and if he hadn't already topped himself I'd take care of it for him, so don't try to _guess_ how I feel, god damn it, and don't you dare try to foist your own complexes off on me, because I know how I feel and I'm certainly not the one who ought to feel guilty."

"Oh, fuck off!" Lestrade said, standing so abruptly that John glanced up at him out of instinct. His face was blazing. "I'm the one who called to warn you the order'd been given to arrest him, in case you've forgotten. I've been on his side since before you even-" Lestrade stopped suddenly, drawing a great, quivering breath. "Never mind. I thought we were friends, or at least allies. Something. But if you'd rather be alone, you and your bloody stupid martyr complex, then, you know, _fine_. Just- fine."

Lestrade paused as if waiting for a rejoinder, then stalked away, back towards the entrance to the graveyard.

* * *

Then there was the issue of Seb Moran.

The man had flat-out vanished by the time John was back in London with his cane and his pension. The military wouldn't help of course; that was the whole point, to delete him from their collective memory, and the whole ugly Khost business along with him. John couldn't find him on the web, or via any of the resources designed for vets trying to reconnect, and he wasn't turning up in any phone books. John knew next to nothing about his family, and other than the occasional e-mail they hadn't really connected between deployments, so he just didn't have any leads. By the time he'd met Sherlock, he'd basically given up on figuring out where Seb had gone. Until that meeting with Mycroft- the one that John now realizes was the bastard's first attempt at damage control, having belatedly realized that giving your brother's life story to a psychopath was not the brightest idea.

John had felt the spark of recognition when Mycroft shoved the photo under his nose in his stupid posh club, but he feigned ignorance because _fuck_ Mycroft and his fucking games, there were things about John's past that he was not entitled to know. John had barely had the time to process _top international assassin_ , what with Sherlock being called in on the kidnapping almost immediately after that meeting. And after that...well. It's not like he'd had a lot of time to sit down and muse about the old days.

Until after Sherlock's jump. Then he had nothing but time.

And then, one day, there he was: the lanky figure with the deep-set eyes and jutting chin that he remembered, with the shock of unruly hair from the photograph. He was sitting on the front steps of John's building, having a smoke. Denim jacket and a Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt, ESS Airbornes, looking like a club kid with a few extra years hanging on him.

"Jove," he said politely, exhaling as John reached the steps.

"Seb." John walked past him and put his key in the lock. "I suppose you'd better come up."

Seb leaned his bony hip on the ratty sofa and watched John put away beans, bread, weetabix in the cupboard. "The flat at Baker Street is better," he said, carefully folding his sunglasses and setting them down.

"Can't afford it any more." Not the main reason he'd left, but still true. He closed the cupboard and stared at it for a second. "International assassin, really?"

"Well I had to do something with myself," Seb said.

"So you chose murder for hire?" John turned so as not to lose the impact of his raised eyebrow.

"The same way you chose CP on Sherlock Holmes," Seb said, and John's fists clenched involuntarily. "We do what we're good at."

"You were one of Moriarty's clients," John said. He wasn't going to dick around with small talk when Sherlock's death and the events surrounding it were standing between them like a wall of knives. "You wanted the code, he offered it-" But Seb was shaking his head. "What then?"

"He was _my_ client. 'If anybody touches Sherlock besides me, I want you to put three slugs in him.' I tried to tell him slugs are shotgun ammo, but you know how civilians are." Seb grinned, and John's skin leapt and crawled with a fierce urge to punch him. "I think he was some kind of dramatist."

"Oh, fuck off," John snapped, stepping closer. As if he had any idea _at all_ what Moriarty was, what his love of dramatic bullshit had cost. As if he had a right to stand in John's flat and joke about committing murder at Moriarty's command.

"Christ, now they've got you thinking like a civilian," Seb complained. "We've both killed better men than either of those bastards I shot." This was undoubtedly true, but it didn't reduce John's anger at all.

"Moriarty ruined Sherlock," John said, his voice low and dangerous. "And you were part of it."

Seb met his eyes coolly, inclining his head slightly to acknowledge the truth of this without giving an inch of ground. A challenge, not an agreement. "So were you," he said after a moment. 

John punched him in the face.

The struggle distinctly lacked finesse, despite both their years of training in close combat, both armed and unarmed. John had a knife in his boot and he could clearly see that Seb was carrying both a snub-nosed handgun and a balisong knife, but neither of them reached for weapons. This wasn't that kind of fight. It was hard and fast and brutal, grappling and shoving, knees and elbows, pulling hair and gouging at eyes and hard-edged punches at the groin and kidneys. John bounced Seb's head off the wall and left a splash of blood there, Seb kicked him to the floor and stomped on his fingers. In times of action John's head was always clear, but now it was full of the roaring in his ears and Seb's and his labored breathing and somewhere in the back of his head Sherlock's voice: _Keep your eyes fixed on me, can you do this for me?_

It ended in stalemate, both of them gasping and spent on the floor, bent over and dripping blood onto the grotty carpet. Seb felt for his cigarettes and pulled one out, rather battered now but still intact.

"Oi," John said. "You can't smoke in here."

"Come stop me," Seb said. He rolled over onto his back and blew smoke at the ceiling, wiping at his nose with the sleeve of his jacket. "Feel better?"

"Yeah," John said, lying very still so he could hear his heart pounding. "Yeah, a bit."

"Me too," Seb said. "Better than fucking therapy by a long shot, hey?"

"How did you know-" John heard the voice in the back of his head saying _You've got a psychosomatic limp, of course you've got a therapist_ , and firmly told it, _No, stop, don't spoil this_. "Forget it."

"You didn't testify at my court martial," Seb said to the ceiling.

"Nobody told me there was one," John said. "Anyway I was out of my head with fever, wasn't I?"

"I know," Seb said. "If I thought you were in on it I would have killed you myself."

"Well I wasn't," John said.

"I said I bloody know."

"Good."

"Fine."

" _Fine_."

John was never sure, later, which one of them started laughing first.

* * *

_Meet me at the Caffe Nero around the corner_ , said the text John got the next morning. The chime of the text alert dumped adrenaline into John's bloodstream even though he never _really_ considered that Sherlock might suddenly text him from beyond the grave. It was a reflex. 90% of John's texts had been from Sherlock, before, and therefore meant excitement ( _Meet me at NSY, new case. S_ ) or danger ( _Bring your gun. S_ ) or even just rage ( _Small fire in bathroom. Pick up new towels on way home. S_ ). It was more than a month since he'd got one, and he was still Pavlov's bloody dog.

Bit disingenuous to ask who it was: the number wasn't in John's phone, which meant it was either someone he knew who didn't have his number, or Mycroft. And Mycroft would probably commit ritual suicide before being caught in a Caffe Nero. But admitting that his social life was that pathetic- had been even before, really- was too embarrassing. _Why?_ he finally texted back.

 _Don't be a wanker Jove._ John sighed and went to get dressed.

After the first five minutes picking at his muffin and waiting for Seb, he started reading a discarded paper. Fuck it. Seb could find _him_ , he wasn't going to sit there looking like he'd been stood up by his coffee date.

Finally the man plunked himself down opposite John, dressed down in denim again, still wearing his obnoxious Airbornes.

"Those don't look nearly as cool as you think," John told him snidely.

"Still cooler than you." Seb smirked.

"What do you want, Seb?" John folded the paper over and set it down next to his demolished muffin.

"To ask for your help," Seb said. When he turned his head slightly to the side, John could see that the Airbornes were disguising an enormous black eye that Seb probably got from him. "Do you know how many people were watching your old flat?"

John remembered back to the conversation he had with Mycroft, the folders he'd been shown. "Four. Sulamari, Ludmilla something, you, and another guy whose name I don't remember."

Seb shook his head. "Five. Not including me, because I wasn't there for the same reason they were. Two of them are dead, one has left the country. The other two are still here."

John raised an eyebrow. "Decided to immigrate, did they?"

Seb's grin took up most of his face. "You'd be surprised by the strength of the domestic job market, Jove. At any rate I have a client who thinks they've overstayed their welcome."

"What happened to calling the police? The government knows who they are," John noted.

Seb was already shaking his head. "Their only evidence is suspicion, rumor- these are professionals. The best the government could do would be to deport them home, or perhaps to another country that's got more evidence or fewer scruples."

"So you're going to just, what? Mur-" John followed Seb's glance sideways at a nearby table with two businessmen chatting over coffee. "Get rid of them?" Seb cocked his head, and John laughed a little hysterically. "Christ, Seb." It was hard to read people without seeing their eyes, but John had a lot of experience with Seb. And he also had a lot of experience with _pity_. "I appreciate what you're trying to do. But I'm not that-" He stopped. _Desperate_ seemed a bit too insulting for an old friend trying to do him a favor.

"It's not like that," Seb snapped. He reached up and drew off his sunglasses, exposing his glare to John, who leaned back. Clearly the last thing on Seb's mind was pity. "They both know me, if I don't catch them simultaneously I might be months tracking down the second one again. So I need a man I can trust not to cut my throat or cock the whole thing up."

"I still don't-" John started, and Seb cut him off with a sideways jerk of his hand.

"Bullshit, you don't. Either of these shits has a higher body count than our entire troop did. I doubt even their mums would cry for them. And you- well." Seb shrugged slightly. "You have a personal interest. And I know you. There's nothing for you on civvy street."

John sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. He didn't want to admit how right Seb was; every day he could feel the torpor stealing back over him, dragging him back to the blank emptiness of his life post-war and pre-Sherlock. "We all have to become civilians sometime," he said wearily. It was his mantra, what the Army psychologists had told him, what Sherlock had taught him was bullshit. That man had never worn a uniform or taken an oath, but he was _never_ a civilian.

Seb slid his glasses back on. "Not us," he said. " _Socii patiantur pereant soli_." He took a pair of folders out of his jacket, one navy and one maroon, and dropped them in front of John so that they slid off the remains of his muffin and he had to grab them before they fell to the floor. "What are these?" John flipped the top folder open almost automatically. In it were pictures of the Russian woman Mycroft had identified as an assassin. Dyachenko, that was it. There were photos, maps, a list of confirmed kills. John lingered over those pages. The names were unfamiliar, but helpfully identified in parentheses: Swiss politician, Tibetan activist, Russian politician, Russian military leader.

"Lots of Russians," John noted. "Patriotic girl, is she?" Seb chuckled, and John felt the corner of his mouth quirk up in a half-smile. John flipped back to the photos. He never liked having to fight women. Old-fashioned, he knew. _Idiotic_ , Sherlock had said. But he was raised not to hit girls, and some things were hard to talk yourself out of, even if you knew firsthand women could be just as dangerous as men. _Why does it matter?_ he asked himself. It's not like he was seriously considering this, was it? He shut the blue folder and stuck it under the magenta one, opened that up. _Just curiosity_ , he told himself. He wanted to see who the other one was.

John did a double take.

"Holy Christ," he said. "Him?" The heavyset man in the photos was startlingly familiar, although he wasn't one of the assassins Mycroft had showed him pictures of. 

"Seen him, have you?" Seb asked.

John flipped through the photos, and sure enough there was a shot where he was in shirtsleeves and John could see the stark black tribal tattoos twisting up his forearms. The sudden flood of rage and adrenaline choked him even while his heart pounded in his ears. "Yeah." John cleared his throat, licked his lips, and tried again. "Yeah. He was doing some work at Baker Street. I came back to the flat to check on Mrs. Hudson, and he was-" The rage mingled with nausea.

"Christ- your landlady? What did he do?"

"Nothing," John said. "Nothing- it's just. He was _right there_. I left her with him! I didn't even realize-" Logically he knew at least one of them had been in there, they'd found the camera after all. Hell, Moriarty had been in the flat. But it was somehow different to realize that a dangerous assassin had been standing in the foyer being chatted at fondly by Mrs. Hudson, and John had looked at him and not seen- He'd left Mrs. Hudson in danger because he just couldn't _observe_. His inner Sherlock cursed him for a simple-minded cretin. John flipped through the rest of the folder, taking in stats, confirmed kills, recent movements, the name and location of the hotel where the Estonian assassin was currently staying.

He slapped the folder shut with finality and handed both back across to Seb. "Him," John said. "I'll have him."

Seb cocked his head again. "You're sure?" he said. "If you really don't want to, mate, it's fine."

 _Do you want to see some more?_ John's smile was a fragile, sharp thing, like a shard of broken glass. "Oh yeah," he said. "I'm sure."

* * *

That afternoon a courier delivered a large envelope to John at his flat; when he slit it open he found a pay-as-you-go mobile with a single number pre-programmed into it under the name 5NF. An hour later, 5NF texted him, _No privacy in London anymore, bloody cameras. Got a bp?_

John had in fact been thinking of a plan, turning over the information he had read about the assassin called Peeter Sepp. Someone had already done most of the dull recon bits, figuring out when the Estonian was in his hotel room and that. Probably Seb. _Maybe. date/time?_

_Fri 11p will both be home. Requis?_

John had left behind the sort of life where you had to plan how to kill someone years ago, but it was a surprisingly easy mindset to fall back into. It was familiar, almost nostalgic. So John spent the time most people would occupy agonizing over whether to end a life planning how he would do it. Most close weapons were messy and personal, so gun was the obvious choice. Just as easily, John couldn't use his. Even with Sherlock gone- _don't think about that, damn it, stop_ \- there were two people at minimum who knew about the Sig. The taxi driver had been one thing, but if the gun was ever traced back to Sepp's murder...well. John knew just what to tell Seb when he asked what gear was needed.

_wp22 gtsup subs_

The reply was immediate: _Traditionalist._

The gun was delivered the next afternoon, to Baker Street, disguised as a package from the Christmas Jumper Company. Which was probably Seb's idea of humor. John made stilted small talk with Mrs. Hudson over tea until he couldn't think of anything else to say that didn't involve Sherlock in some way. After he escaped to his new flat, he opened the box and immediately cleaned and checked the Walther P22 inside. He laid it in the top drawer of his desk and felt strangely pleased.

Thursday morning he memorized a street map of the area surrounding Sepp's hotel and then went for a long, leisurely walk through the neighborhood. He ate an ice cream and window shopped and tried not to make it obvious that he was locating every CCTV camera and pinning virtual tacks on his mental map.

On Friday around 9, John casually loaded the P22 and put it in his left jacket pocket and the silencer in his right. He took the tube most of the way and walked the last couple blocks to a pizza place owned by a man whose missing son Sherlock had once located. John had only been there once, 18 months ago, but he'd remembered when he walked past the previous day that it was part of Sherlock's network of gratitude. Sure enough, by the time John had finished his slice of pizza, Hassan had come out of the kitchen to say hello. With Sherlock gone, John found himself somehow the target of redirected but effusive thanks.

"The newspapers, always lying," Hassan said. "He was no fake. I know." It should've been reassuring to hear other people testify to their faith in Sherlock. But instead it made John's gut clench and his face freeze into a blank mask.

"Hassan," he finally cut the man off. "Can I use your back door?"

Of course he could, Sherlock's friend could come back through the kitchen and welcome. When the door closed behind him, John was in the narrow alley between two sets of commercial buildings, which just happened to be a CCTV blind spot. The alley led him to the unguarded entrance of a block of flats, whose second story terrace was close enough to the fire escape of Sepp's low-rent hotel that he didn't have to jump so much as step over the gap.

By the time John let himself into the right hotel room, he was buzzing with adrenaline. Some guys loved the planning. John was not one of them. For him, the planning was a necessary ritual, like a gourmand chopping veg or a junkie fiddling with spoons and syringes. The planning just enabled the sweet rush that came when Sepp arrived home and John stepped out from behind the door, fired two precisely placed bullets into the base of Sepp's skull, and kicked the door shut behind him as he caught the man before he slumped fully to the floor. John laid him neatly on the carpet and checked his carotid pulse with two latex-gloved fingers.

The 22 was terribly neat: the low velocity bullets hadn't even made it through the other side of Sepp's skull. He looked almost peaceful lying on his back, except for the blood pooling under his neck. John unscrewed the suppressor from the barrel of the Walther and pocketed both again. He neatly picked up both shell casings from the floor and put them in his trouser pocket alongside his wallet. He didn't remove and pocket the gloves until he was back in the alley outside.

It was 11:06. John was swimming upstream through endorphins and having to school the grin from his expression with utmost care as he walked back to the restaurant, let himself in through the back door. _Are you all right? Well you have just killed a man._ This time, the memory of Sherlock's voice in his head was comforting, not painful. _Well he wasn't a very nice man_ , he told Sherlock silently, and remembered giggling together and the suffusion of warmth as he realized that Sherlock wasn't going to turn him in, that he _approved_ of what John had done. John allowed himself a little bit of a smile as he walked out the front door and popped back into existence again.

He walked home. He needed the pleasant burn of a long walk in his legs and lungs to work off the energy; if he took the Tube home he'd just be bouncing off the walls all night. Anyway, the walk gave him an opportunity to cross over the Thames, letting the shell casings fall from his re-gloved hand as he leaned for a moment over the safety rail.

The gun and the silencer, he kept.

* * *

The next package from Seb contained another pay as you go mobile, a short note ("take the SIM card out of the old phone and break it") and five thousand pounds in cash.

 _What the fuck is this_ , John texted when he got the phone booted up.

_Your share. Well part of it, didn't want to send it all in one go._

_I can't take it_ , John replied, his hands shaking slightly. He didn't even need to think. Something about holding the money in his hands, knowing it was payment for killing a man, made him feel sick to his stomach.

 _Why the fuck not?_ came in while John was already thumbing out his next message.

 _I didn't do it for money, it was never for money, I can't take it._ He did it as a favor to Seb, as vengeance for Mrs. Hudson and for Sherlock. And maybe, he had to admit, for himself most of all: a reminder that he was still useful, could still help and protect people.

 _So it's only immoral if you get paid?_ Seb texted back.

 _Fuck you,_ John sent. He wasn't going to get into an argument about morality with Seb, of all people.

There was a lengthy pause then, which John recognized from two years' worth of having fights with Sherlock via text message as the other party typing a long reply. _It was never about money for me either, you know, but a man has to eat. I'd be insulted if this wasn't your usual passive-aggressive pissant bullshit._

 _My aggression is not passive._ John forgot to breathe, waiting to see if this attempt at diffusion succeeded.

_Give it back then, Christ, what do I care._

John sellotaped the envelope shut again with the cash inside, and when a bored courier rang his bell he gave it to her without a bit of hesitation. _I just can't take it. Don't make it a thing,_ John texted.

_Fine, next time you get paid in altruism and rainbows._

_Fine,_ John replied. It was only about ten minutes later, after he'd set the phone down and was making himself a mug of tea, that he realized that during the conversation his crisis of conscience had slipped right by him and he'd segued directly from post-case adrenaline into comfortable acceptance.

In other words, he'd already made up his mind that there would be a next time.

* * *

He didn't hear anything from Seb for more than a week. He fell back into routine: shopped, went for walks, checked the job listings, made his weekly appointment with Ella. He thought about Sepp from time to time. He didn't feel any urge to walk by the hotel or check the papers for news of the body being found- John was only an idiot when compared to Sherlock, that kind of crap was amateur hour. He never felt any particular guilt, which did surprise him a bit. It was true that in NF he had killed people, but usually it was in aid of something else; he didn't just sit down and plan out murders. He had never regretted the cabbie either, but that was a bit more spur of the moment. So John might have felt _something_. But he didn't.

Sherlock had once thrown a man out of a window for putting his hands on Mrs. Hudson. He hadn't shot him twice in the back of the head, but then Sherlock had never been specifically trained to kill people. 

John reminded himself that he hadn't changed; not really, not irrevocably. He was a criminal, sure, but he'd been a criminal for years, toting around an illegal gun and firing it when necessary, never mind all the burglaries and assaults he'd committed in Sherlock's cause. Whether it was speeding or stealing or hurting someone, no one really believed the law applied to their specific situation. Morality was a very flexible beast.

John checked Seb's mobile every day.

One night, a new text was waiting: _Lots of business lately. Could use a subcontractor._

John swallowed, his mouth dry even as he tapped back, _Not an assassin._

The reply was so quick that Seb must have anticipated John's words. _Because it doesn't count if you don't get paid?_

 _Because money doesn't motivate me_ , John fired back.

There was a longish pause, then. The Sherlock in John's head crowed, _Wrong, John! Many assassins are motivated by non-financial factors._ He could probably give John names, if he was here. But that still wasn't the point. John had finally given up waiting for a reply when the phone suddenly rang.

"Moriarty was more than just one man," Seb said as soon as John picked up.

"He-"

"No, shut up," Seb said. "Everybody and I mean _everybody_ knew who he was. Not how to get to him, but that he existed. He didn't manage it all himself, there's no way."

"He had a network," John said, bits of Sherlock's rants coalescing in his mind. Sherlock was fixated on Moriarty, the "spider at the center of the web," as he said, but the existence of the web was always implicit. "Why would you care?"

"I don't," Seb said. "But you do." John said nothing. "Criminal networks don't die with their leader, any more than terrorist cells or insurgent movements. I can help you get the guys that want to replace Moriarty," Seb promised.

"Nobody can replace him," John said. "He was unique." Well, almost unique. No, stop, don't think about that.

"So was bin Laden. How's that working out?"

John cracked a smile. There's always someone left to fight over what the boss leaves behind- that was a truth John, like Seb, like a thousand other soldiers, had etched in his gut and his bones by Afghanistan. "Okay. I wouldn't mind kicking Moriarty's people while they're down." Sherlock would have done it, if he'd survived the roof; he would have put on steel-toed boots and laughed the whole time. "But I still don't get why you'd help. Chasing a dead man's lackeys can't be that profitable. I thought you needed to eat."

"You'd be surprised." Amusement lurked in Seb's voice. "And shit, Jove, I miss working with you. I don't-" Seb's voice caught for a fraction of a second. "I don't really have anybody I can trust. It makes a nice change." God, did John know how _that_ felt.

"Okay," John said. "Okay. What do you have?"

* * *

What Seb had was a tip about Moriarty's involvement in arms smuggling. John booked a flight to Volgograd- Seb sent him a passport that gave him the last name Ivanoff, ha ha- but John bought his own black market gun once he arrived, a snub-nosed little Makarov repro that he'd be sorry to have to dump when he left the country. It was about a week and a half of solid recon, following a Russian gangster that Moriarty's former man, Balanchuk, was apparently trying to woo into a contract.

"The buzz is that Balanchuk has taken over Moriarty's operations in the Baltic states and the Ukraine," Seb had told him. Now he was poised to expand into Russia. If John took him down, none of his underlings were sufficiently powerful or respected to take over the whole network. It would fall to smaller, much less dangerous, pieces.

John didn't have the technology he'd had access to in November Foxtrot, nor did he have Jack's language skills. So most of the recon involved following Balanchuk and the Russian around, watching their movements at long range through a spotting scope he'd bought back in England along with a couple field guides on Russian birds. He was sitting on the roof of a combine factory eating a sandwich and waiting for Balanchuk to return to his armored car when his mobile vibrated.

Surprised, John hauled the phone out and glanced at the display before answering. Mostly out of habit, of course it read 5NF- who else was going to call this phone? "Christ," Seb said when he picked up. "I didn't expect this to go through. Aren't you done yet?"

"Soon," John said. "Tomorrow morning, I think." Balanchuk's security was sloppy when he was getting in or out of the car back at the hotel. That was probably the best time.

"What happened to thunder and lightning?" Seb asked. "You sad tosser."

"Oh, piss off," John said, smiling to himself. "I'm not the one who needs to hire someone to do his wet work."

"It's not hiring if nobody gets paid," Seb said. "You're more a hobbyist. Blackwater hobbyist."

"I'm freelance," John said. "Go fuck yourself."

Their shared laughter was easy, and it warmed John. Surveillance was boring, and stakeouts were lonely. It always helped to have someone to share them with: even if you were on hard discipline and you couldn't talk, even if you were crammed together into a narrow closet listening to a murderer rustling around in the next room. It was good to hear another man's breathing in counterpoint to yours, to know you weren't on your own. _Sentimental_ , Sherlock would have said, but it wasn't. Just human nature. Even Sherlock was subject to it, or why had he dragged John along on so many of his cases?

John could smile at that, now.

"Hey, Jove," Seb said, distracting him from his thoughts.

"Yeah?"

"Can you get me his phone?"

John gave it a moment's thought. "I could go in close, sure. I know what pocket he keeps it in." Right trouser pocket, always. It might be easier to get the jump on him by pushing in close, anyway. Vantage points were a bitch when your target was constantly moving. "Why?"

"I think it's got his client list," Seb said. "Useful intel, that."

John felt a slight twinge- he was trying to cut Moriarty's network down, surely the information that was part of it ought to be destroyed along with the men who ran it?

As the pause lengthened, Seb began to wheedle. "Oh, come on," he said. "The client list is downstream, not up. Smaller fish. You don't need or want it, and I can use it."

John huffed a breath. "All right," he said. It was _Seb_ , anyway. He was a gun for hire, not an arms smuggler. Hell, maybe that was how he made the connections that let him get hold of illegal weapons. An arms smuggler was a likely source of the Makarov John was carrying now, it was a bit hypocritical of him to profit from these people on the one hand and condemn them from the other. He was losing focus, that was the problem. This was supposed to be about shutting down Moriarty for good, not saving the world one criminal at a time. There were way too many criminals for that to work; he'd learned that lesson in Afghanistan.

"I've gotta go," he told Seb. "Target's moving." Suited figures were emerging from the warehouse meeting place, headed back to the car.

"Don't fuck up," Seb said, and rang off.

John laughed again as he stuffed his gear into the pockets of his overcoat.

John was up at five the next morning, high on black coffee and adrenaline as he walked briskly towards Balanchuk's hotel. Like a lot of powerful people, he was a man of habit, and it hadn't taken him long as a guest in Volgograd to establish one here. John timed his arrival carefully, so that he was just turning the corner at the hotel when the Balanchuk emerged at 7:10 precisely to be chauffeured to breakfast. One of his bodyguards stepped ahead to open the car door, turning his back to John. The other lagged behind in the lobby, exchanging words with the doorman as was his habit. It was maybe fifteen seconds of inattentiveness, but John had been timing it every day for a week and he knew exactly how to exploit it.

The tricky bit was to fire and keep firing as he walked. First two shots into the bodyguard at the car door, shoulder of his gun arm and then knee. Re-aim at Balanchuk, inhale, exhale, two in the chest, second bodyguard emerging from the hotel to John's left, two in the left kneecap, visual check to be sure the driver is still in the car, excellent. John had come alongside Balanchuk by then, who was bleeding and wetly gurgling through a pneumothorax. Stoop and fish the phone out of his trouser pocket with the right hand, two more in the head with the left. Visual check: driver keeping his head down, bodyguards still down. John pocketed the phone and the gun and kept right on with his brisk walk.

He broke into a run when he turned the corner, dashed up two streets, and hailed a cab. In the men's room of a McDonald’s down by the Volga, he washed his hands vigorously and field stripped the Makarov. The pieces, along with the leftover bullets and the shell casings, went into his pocket, and then into the river. After a brief exchange of texts with Seb, he packed up Balanchuk's mobile and sent it off via courier.

When he boarded his plane home that afternoon, he was no longer wearing or carrying anything that could connect him to Balanchuk's execution.

* * *

The calls and texts came in a steady stream after that. He kept up his routine for the sake of things, kept interviewing for part-time work, but now he was always a little glad when they turned him down. He didn't need the money: the pension covered his bills and food, barely, and while he'd had to argue twice more about payment with Seb, after Volgograd John agreed to accept reimbursement for travel expenses. A legitimate job would just mean more people John had to explain himself to.

Not that he always had to travel. Moriarty, unsurprisingly, had plenty of lackeys and underbosses in good old England. John wondered if he had started in the UK; he'd never really learned anything about the man personally. Moriarty and his accents had seemed UK-based, but he also had an obvious flair for mimicry that taken to its logical conclusion meant he could really be from anywhere. Sherlock had gone off on a rant about it once or twice, muttering about linguistics in a way that John hadn't thought was important, at the time. He'd just assumed that any time he was working on the Moriarty problem, Sherlock would be there with all his insight to point John in the right direction.

Nor was it all assassinations. Sometimes he did intel trades, sussing out criminal schemes that weren't directly Moriarty-related, and giving the info to Seb in exchange for new leads or targets that John was interested in. That led to not a few b&e jobs- a bit like old days, rifling through documents in various offices and back rooms while hoping the owner didn't show up ahead of schedule. Or sabotage, which could involve anything from arson to whispering in the right ears to set off inter-syndicate warfare.

Ono one occasion, he flew to Colombia on a fake English passport- he'd never pass for South American, he couldn't speak Spanish worth a damn for one thing- and spent a week working close protection on a high-ranking drug lord.

 _Fuck off_ , he'd texted to Seb, thumbs stumbling in his rush so that he had to delete and retype it twice. Then, on the phone because it was impossible to yell properly via text message, "What about 'I want to take down Moriarty's network' screams 'I would love to cozy up to a Colombian crime syndicate?' Half of them are listed terrorist groups!"

"His chief rival is Julio Botero," Seb said. "He started out as a client of Moriarty's, but he became a sort of subcontractor, sourcing all the work that Moriarty was doing there."

"How do you know that?" John snapped.

"For starters, he's been bragging about it for the past six months," Seb said.

John half-laughed. "Because self-serving statements are such reliable intel? Christ, were you _in_ the war or was that just your body double?" There was an undercurrent of familiarity to the conversation that John took a second to recognize: oh yeah, arguing strategy with a berk who thought he knew it all and couldn't think things through. He'd never done that before at all.

"Jove, I'm locked in to sources you don't have. If you could bloody google these guys' connections, international law enforcement would have it well sorted, wouldn't they?" He had to concede that one. It was sort of the point of their arrangement. "Botero is for real. He wants to be Colombia's new criminal mastermind, but his whole fortune and his main rep are built on coke. You can break it open but you're not going to be able to do it without help."

John drummed his fingers on the edge of his desk. He could cooperate with some distasteful people and bring down Botero. Or he could let well enough alone and see Botero trade on the resources Moriarty fed him to become even nastier than his rivals.

John had always thought that easy choices were barely worth the time you took to make them.

"Fine," he said. "I'll show these idiots how we bodyguard when we actually care if the person gets killed, shall I?" Seb's low, pleased chuckle was almost familiar too.

CP was was mostly about paying attention, because it took someone particularly suicidal (i.e. a lunatic) to just charge at a target without looking at his security. And anyone who looked at the security and saw that it was really fucking good was likely to be deterred from testing it. So if your target and the rest of the security detail followed procedure, and you were doing your own job right, it was all hideously boring. It made John nostalgic for the days of what Seb had (not inaccurately) called _CP on Sherlock Holmes_ , because bodyguarding Sherlock was infuriating and challenging and never, ever boring; mostly because the man was constitutionally incapable of not stupidly risking his life at every opportunity.

The drug lord John was sat on took his safety seriously; he wanted money and power, not danger and excitement. The men working with John listened to his orders and followed them perfectly. It was, quite frankly, _hateful_. At least it was productive. John walked away with intel on Botero's operation and a promise of resources to help bring him down. All John had to do was plan it.

There was a sort of giddy thrill that came along with planning destruction on this kind of scale. It wasn't state-sanctioned this time around, but John somehow doubted that the state would disapprove if they knew. And it was nice not to have to get hold of all the material personally, although he did insist on managing the execution himself; he did in fact have limits, and he wasn't about to start giving Colombian gangsters courses in British special ops. He set up and blew the primary charges under Botero's main distribution point himself; also the ones in his private office (his bodyguards were too good for a frontal assault, and John wanted to be sure). One of Botero's lieutenants died with him, the second and third were gunned down in two separate assassinations (which John planned but did not execute), and the fourth ended up grabbed by the Colombian DEA after an anonymous tip. John's erstwhile allies weren't too happy about that, but the guy was the only one of Botero's who was actually on the wanted list, so he figured he might as well take advantage.

 _Riding into the sunset on a wave of native resentment? Been taking lessons from the Americans?_ John's phone read when he deplaned at Heathrow.

 _:)_ was all John texted back.

* * *

John went to the gravestone again the day after he got back. He wanted to talk to someone and everyone he knew (few as they were) was right out, because they'd inevitably ask why he was so tan, and so cheerful, although probably none of them would notice the distinctive chemical stains on his fingertips. It wasn't the same as having a conversation, but at least when John visited Sherlock, he felt that he was talking to someone. If he was really talking to no one, well, it was less insane than talking to no one in his flat.

But of course even sitting at the graveside in the open air, no one around, unlikely to be bugged (John didn't think even Mycroft, bar none the most intrusive man he'd ever met, would bug a _gravestone_ ), he was still too paranoid to speak aloud about what he'd done.

"You'd have enjoyed that," he finally said. Sherlock preferred the puzzle, but when the authorities couldn't or wouldn't step in, Sherlock was always there, John at his side, to physically chase the suspect down and put him in custody. Sherlock's denouement was the clever reveal, but he knew that John lived for the adrenaline granted by the chase and the capture, that however much he protested he always burned with secret joy when he got to fire his gun. John had frequently wondered in those days how many times Sherlock decided they needed to conduct the capture themselves just to sate John's lust for action. There had always been that sort of prideful glee when he grinned at John after a case, as if he considered near-death experiences a sort of gift.

John had kept thinking of Sherlock at the oddest times, in Columbia, and when he'd blown the charges that ruined a quarter of a million pounds' worth of cocaine he'd thought _take that_ , as if it was the final word in their years-long argument about addiction. "I wish you'd been there," he whispered.

Absurd, because if Sherlock had been there he'd have figured out a way to get Botero's entire crew arrested...and probably the cartel John had worked with, too. He would have been frustrated by John's inability to trace these cogs in Moriarty's machine back to the heart of the mechanism.

"I'm not you," John said quietly. "I can't be you. I can't put it all together the way you can, and I can't build the case and persuade the authorities to take action. All I can do is end it, be the action the government would take if they understood how important it was." It was what he trained for, what he was good at. He was the solution for countless problems in Afghanistan, and he was the solution to the problems left by Moriarty. Just, now he wasn't letting anyone else tell him what to do any more.

* * *

Very shortly thereafter, John went off on a short-notice trip to Albania. He had gone to end the lives of a pair of Moriarty-funded entrepreneurs, but that became secondary once he figured out that their business venture involved smuggling girls into Italy to serve as involuntary prostitutes. When he returned, it was with a feeling of remarkable contentment with life, the sort of calm _rightness_ that since Sherlock's death, he had only really felt for a few minutes just after putting one of Moriarty's people in the ground.

That mood soured as soon as he'd dropped his overnight bag inside the door of his flat. "Mycroft," he said flatly.

Mycroft Holmes sat at ease in John's desk chair, turned away from the desk to face the room. He had one leg crossed casually over the other, and he looked as impeccable as ever, his usual umbrella leaning against the desk next to him. Did he look a touch sallow, his cheeks a little more hollow, his middle a bit plumper beneath the tailored suit, or was John imagining it?

"Hello, John," he said.

John crossed his arms over his chest. "What are you doing here?" He hadn't seen Mycroft since his aborted attempt to speak to John just after he changed flats: roughly eleven months ago now. It was as if his momentary paranoia at Sherlock's grave had conjured the man.

"Simply checking in on an old friend. Is that so unusual?"

John barked a laugh. "Friend. No. We're not _friends_ , Mycroft. You only ever checked up on me because you wanted to check up on-" John's breath caught, looking at Mycroft's face. They looked so, so alike in their expressions sometimes, and that aloof look was textbook Sherlock. "No. You don't have that excuse any more."

"What if I were to tell you I was interested in a somewhat more professional capacity?" Mycroft said. His voice was light, but John could see the danger lurking there. He squared his shoulders. "You've not been back to your flat in six days, but you took only an overnight bag," Mycroft said. "You're a light packer generally speaking, but even so that suggests-"

"Mycroft, don't do this," John said, but Mycroft kept right on talking over him.

"-that you were not using your own clothing for the entirety of the trip. What's more, there are no records of John Watson traveling by train, aeroplane, or hired car in the past week."

John gritted his teeth. "This is really none of your business."

"I'm afraid it might be."

John was reminded of the staring contests Sherlock and Mycroft used to have: entire conversations in a language foreign to John, exchanged right under his nose, quirks of the face and eyes sending each other a thousand messages. John didn't flatter himself that he understood Mycroft the way his brother had, but he could see well enough that Mycroft had some suspicions that John was up to no good- he was the British government after all- but not enough to take any concrete action or put them out in the open. That was oddly reassuring in its way. If he was fooling Mycroft Holmes, he could fool anyone.

"Do you ever imagine him watching you, John?" Mycroft asked. John froze, drawing a long, shuddering breath in through his nose and expelling it in a hiss between his teeth. Time had somewhat dulled John's memory of what it was like to be subjected to this kind of psychological game. He had to forcibly remind himself, _he cannot read your mind, just your body language_. "Do you ever imagine what he'd think?" Mycroft leaned slightly forward. "Shall I tell you?"

"Get out," John said, his voice tight. He swung open the door that he'd closed behind him and stood to one side, clearing Mycroft's path to it. " _Get. Out._ " Something in his eyes or the way his body was tensed must have made Mycroft realize that he was not fucking around, because in between one word and the next he was on his feet and tucking his umbrella under his arm. Mycroft opened his mouth and John raised a hand and looked away. "No. Let me be perfectly clear, since evidently my punching you in the face and then declining to speak to you for a year has been too subtle. I am done with the Holmes family. I will not be taking any calls, or any visits, and under no circumstances any _advice_ you care to offer me, so just save. Your. Breath."

John gripped the door handle pointedly and glared Mycroft all the way out the door. He paused on the threshold and there was a slight in-drawn breath, as if he was about to say something. But he moved through without speaking, and John heard him recede down the stairs without further comment.


	3. Chapter 3

_1 year ASH (After Sherlock Holmes)_

When John woke up he had a text waiting. _Got another local._

John frowned; it had only been a month since the last time John had struck a target near to London, as Seb well knew. He was the one who had taught John how important it was to avoid making too obvious a trail, especially when your style was fairly consistent. _Too soon_ , he texted back.

_Daily Mail p6._

John sighed. _I don't have it._

_I'll wait._

Well, he needed more bread anyway. He trudged down to the corner shop and returned with a few groceries and the proper newspaper. When he folded it open to page 6, a large picture of a posh white bloke looked out at him. Bespoke suit, receding but well-coiffed hairline, entitled smirk: John didn't need Sherlock to tell him what the man did, every inch of him screamed _City job_. Then there was the article itself, which explained that the man, Ronald Adair, was facing indictment after an FSA investigation found evidence of extensive money laundering in firms he controlled. The article went on to talk about stock prices at some length. _So?_ John texted to Seb.

 _Most of that money was JM's._ Before John could draft a reply, there was another text. _He paid me on JM's behalf._ The implications were breathtaking. Most of the men John had encountered were clients or subcontractors or henchmen of Moriarty's. If Seb was right, if Adair was the man Moriarty trusted to handle his operational expenses and manage his money, that meant he was very important indeed...near the center of the web. Not to mention that the destruction of the man who inherited most of Moriarty's wealth by default could only be a benefit in John's goal of collapsing the network even further. Money might or might not make the world go round, but it definitely spun the criminal world; thieves, smugglers, gun runners, and assassins didn't work for free.

Well, most of them didn't. _Worth the risk!_ he texted to Seb.

 _Absofuckinglutely_ , Seb agreed.

John did most of the intel on this one himself. He researched Adair's lifestyle and habits on the internet (tabloids were occasionally useful, as Sherlock had taught him) and then he found a lot of reasons to hang about Adair's neighborhood. Adair lived in a posh Victorian house in Kensington with his mistress and a set of rotating bodyguards, but he spent a lot of time driving around town and meeting with well-dressed but shady contacts in the criminal underworld. The bodyguards made things a bit inconvenient, but they definitely weren't trained to November standards, or even SAS standards. John watched with professional disgust as they let their boss wander around the streets in the open without so much as a stab vest, ride everywhere in a flamboyant and unarmored car, and spend what seemed like half his time in a home office with three unsecured windows.

There were a dozen ways John could get at Adair; he was fairly sure he could get into the house past the bodyguards, too, but no reason to take an undue risk of personal harm or cause a panic by getting him on the street. John found he could get a clear line of sight into Adair's office from the upper floor of a block of luxury flats across the street. He considered asking Seb for a sniper rifle, but it seemed like overkill and would be a pain in the ass to conceal. Plus, when the hell was he going to need a rifle again in London? No, handguns were much more his style, although this clearly wasn't a job for a .22. 

As with all ops, good recon was what made John's extremely simple plan work. He loaded his slightly-used Walther P99 with heavy grain hollow points and put it in one pocket and the suppressor in the other. He got into the stairwell of the vantage building via a door that the maintenance guy kept propped open during smoke breaks, climbed to the roof, attached the suppressor to the gun, and waited until Adair came home to his office exactly on schedule. When Adair stood up at his desk to take a phone call, John aimed, exhaled slowly, and put three bullets into his chest.

He left the building the same way he entered and walked home.

He didn't buy any newspapers the next day, as that would have been outside his pattern, but he did check the news online. Police were evidently "baffled" by Adair's murder, as no motive was known. In an ideal world, John could have given them evidence of Adair's involvement with Moriarty, a trail of paper that would show what Adair truly was and why he had to die. Of course, if John could provide _that_ , Adair could have just gone to trial and then to prison, instead. It was a fruitless line of thought...John didn't have the evidence, he wasn't Sherlock Holmes. He was doing what he could do, and he did feel some satisfaction that at the least he had taken another of Moriarty's men out of the equation.

Typically they swapped mobiles out after every job, but John usually didn't remove and destroy the SIM card from the old one until he got the next. To his surprise, he didn't get another phone; instead, the morning after the murder, he got a text. _Phone box, now, you know where._

The phone box in question was in a rather run-down area a good distance from John's flat, infrequently used and more importantly in a CCTV blind spot. They had used it a couple times for dead drops, but never for its intended purpose. The strangeness and the urgency of Seb's request were enough to make John obey the _now_ portion of the message without question. The tone, the use of the mobile which should have been burned already, the break in routine, all implied that something was wrong, and John's instincts turned out to be exactly right on that score.

The phone started ringing when John entered the block, and he shoved his way into the box and picked it up. "Hello," John said.

"Jove, we've got a problem," Seb said. His voice sounded quite ordinary, but John's neck still crawled with instinctive dread. "Adair's death has set someone on us."

"That's not possible," John said flatly. "It was a clean op."

"I'm not saying it wasn't, you wanker," Seb said, tension bleeding into his voice. "I don't know if he suspected this might happen and had someone watching, or if it's just somebody trying to pick up the pieces. But he's kicking apart Adair's nest and looking for what scurries out."

"Okay," John said. "But you know, there's no way to trace anything to me. I don't see how this is our problem."

"Well look harder," Seb snapped. "The police know more about Adair's death than they're putting in the papers." Obviously. John knew from working with Sherlock that the Yard frequently held things back from the public during murder investigations. "He's been poking around Baker Street."

John's blood went cold. "What?" he said.

"That's why I thought you'd care," Seb said. "It's connected to you, and, well, Holmes must have had a lot of info on Moriarty, so..." Not as much as one would think. John had been through the boxes that Mycroft left stacked in the sitting room (labeled “notes” in John's own hand) looking for jumping off points, and most of them were either illegible in Sherlock's spiky scrawl, or incomprehensible to anyone without his whirlwind genius brain. But an interloper wouldn't know that. A would-be successor for Moriarty or for Adair could be clever enough to think Sherlock might have had useful intel, might take the risk of breaking into 221b with only an elderly landlady keeping watch. The idea of some stranger sorting through Sherlock's things made John feel sick and furious by turns.

Neither of them lived at Baker Street any more, but it was _theirs._

"I'll take care of it," John said.

"Be careful, Jove," Seb said. "I've heard about this guy, he's dangerous in close quarters. He can fight. Just- pull the same trick, get him from another building. He's been going into Baker Street in the evenings, while the landlady's out. End it, and that'll be the Adair branch of things shut down."

"All right," John said. "Fine."

The more John thought about it, the angrier he got. He watched from up the street until night fell, until Mrs. Hudson left for her nightly gossip with Mrs. Turner next door, and then until a round-shouldered man with a cloud of dirty blond hair turned up at the door. He went straight up as if he belonged there and bent over the knob for a few moments, evidently picking the lock. Then he let himself in and shut the door behind him. A few seconds later, the light in the upstairs sitting room, their sitting room, went on.

John closed his eyes and took several deep, calming breaths. Seb's advice was fine as far as it went: keep it distant, quick, professional. But John didn't want to take this professionally. It was personal and his solution would be personal. He wanted to know who this arsehole was that thought he could break into Baker Street and paw through Sherlock's things, what he knew about Moriarty and what his connection was. He wanted to _hurt_ him, with an urge for violence he hadn't felt since he killed the assassin who had threatened Mrs. Hudson.

He was carrying the P99 tonight, loaded with hollow points again and shoved down the back of his waistband, under his light jacket. The jacket restricted his freedom of movement but he wanted the camouflage, as anyone with no coat in this weather would look out of place. He hadn't brought the suppressor because he was planning on using the gun only in case of emergency. The invader was going to be alert for Mrs. Hudson's return, very aware that he was in a strange place. John would have to use his own more intimate knowledge of the building to his advantage. For starters, he eased around back and rather than the front door, let himself into Mrs. Hudson's kitchen using the spare key she hid under a ceramic planter shaped like a frog. He discarded his jacket in the front hall, where the noise of removing it would be less likely to be audible upstairs. Overhead he heard the creaking of the floorboards as the man paced through the flat looking for the right box to pry into. The hallway and the stairwell were darkened, lit only a bit by the light coming from the sitting room upstairs.

John carefully shut his left eye before he began to slowly, quietly climb the steps. Even after so long away, his feet still remembered the quietest parts of each stair, and skipping the squeaky 14th was nearly automatic. He breathed as quietly as possible, and it seemed that the noise of the stranger's pacing and rummaging was enough to cover the sound of his ascent because there was no outcry or flurry of movement indicating discovery. John slipped onto the landing and stole a quick glance into the sitting room: the man was bent over a box sitting in front of the fireplace, perfect. In two rapid steps John was through the doorway, darting his hand to one side to flip off both the light switches, plunging the room from bright to dim, now lit only by the street lamplight through the front windows.

John shut his right eye and opened his left as he darted in, counting on his preserved night vision and his familiarity with the room to give him a momentary edge over the stranger. Unfortunately it appeared Seb was right about the man's prowess at hand to hand, because when John reached his side and threw his first punch, it was blocked and returned in good time. The man's blows were deadly fast, and though John was able to block them he could not stop the man's advance on him. Their combat was near silent, with only heavy breathing and the soft impact of fists on cloth-covered flesh betraying blows thrown and received. Mindful of Seb's warning, John tried not to let the stranger close too tightly. It was never a good idea to grapple with someone before you had his measure. The fact that the man kept trying to grab John, rather than simply hit him, hinted that John's instincts on this were correct.

At one point he lunged around his armchair to avoid another grabbing move, and to his surprise the stranger came _over_ the chair at him. Evidently his night vision advantage was entirely gone then. John was able to catch him a good kick in the ribs that sent him tumbling sideways into the coffee table. As soon as he felt the kick land, his hand went back to pull the gun from his waistband, and he leveled it at the figure. Mindful of his own ambition to question the man, he aimed for the lower torso rather than a vital spot, but somehow the man slithered out of the way, lightning-quick, and the bullet lodged itself in the floor. Insanely, rather than taking cover the stranger _launched_ himself at John, who backpedaled furiously and fired again. The bullet whined as it ricocheted off something behind the man.

The stranger powered his way into John's defenses, one hand forcing his wrist up so that his third shot went into the ceiling. John quit firing then, and concentrated on keeping the stranger's other hand off him. John tried to jerk free, but the grip on his wrist was unyielding and he couldn't twist out of it without giving up the gun, and he was not going to put a weapon in the hands of his opponent. So he dug in and punched with his other hand, aiming for the vulnerable spots on the face; he tried for the throat but the man ducked his head and took the blow on the chin instead, then thrust his own hand in and seized John by the shirt. In a moment he released John's wrist and darted that hand down to seize John under the leg, but before John could bring his newly-freed hand back into play the stranger effortlessly jerked his leg out from under him and slammed him onto the floor.

The man seized his wrist again and attempted to twist the gun free, but John stubbornly refused to release it, even while his wrist grated and screamed in pain. John twisted his body into it and tightened his finger on the trigger, firing another round into the ceiling. As he'd hoped, the man released his hand and sprang back out of his line of fire, but the lights suddenly snapped back on and John had to close his eyes against the glare as at least three different voices were screaming, "Police, drop the gun!"

John stifled a groan, thinking _too fast, it hasn't been thirty seconds yet since I fired_ , but he dropped the gun; or rather, he let someone pull it out of his hand, and someone else roll him onto his stomach and jerk his hands behind his back. He pulled his head back, blinking furiously to readjust to the light so he could see exactly what was going on.

"Oh, well done, London's finest. How many shots were you prepared to let him take before you intervened?" The muffled voice seemed to be coming from the mop-haired stranger crouched opposite John, who he could blearily make out as holding up an arm to shield his face from the light. Someone was kneeling on top of John's legs, and someone was tightly cinching his wrists into handcuffs. Other than his head, he made an effort not to move. 

"Serve you right if he hit you, you smug wanker, you swore blind that he'd be across the bloody street, not taking pot-shots from two meters away!" a familiar voice snapped from the doorway behind John. "Right, whoever you are," the voice said, coming up alongside John. "You're under- _bloody hell_!"

The voice choked off just as John forced his watering eyes to focus enough that he could make out the man standing over him: Greg Lestrade, looking more gobsmacked than John had ever seen him. Lestrade rounded on the stranger, and his voice elevated to a shout. "Are you bloody well kidding me? This had better not be what it looks like, because I am risking my _job_ here and if you're just _fucking me about_ , Sherlock-"

John's eyes jerked to the man across from him, his heart dropping into his stomach as he scanned the face. No, what, impossible, but Lestrade- and the nose was wrong, bent slightly at the ridge like it had been broken or the cartilage damaged and the lips were too thin, the cheeks far too hollow, hair wispy and blond, wrong color wrong texture, no, slight similarity to the shape of the face maybe but _not possible I saw him die_ \- and then the man dropped his arm and locked eyes with John, and oh bloody fuck-buggering Christ there's no other pair of eyes that color on Earth and oh God, oh _Christ_ , he was dreaming, had to be.

John's breathing had somehow gone to ragged gasping, and he wasn't getting near enough oxygen; there wasn't oxygen enough in the whole fucking _world_ for the way Sherlock (or Sherlock's evil twin, or his clone, or _whatever_ ) stared at John with widened eyes and tore the wig (of course it was a wig, obvious, obvious, hair dark and close-cropped underneath, barely curling) off his head and clutched at his hair, his real hair, with his other hand, and choked out, "What- John- I-"

John tried to say his name, but he couldn't get his voice to work properly.

"This is wrong," Sherlock said. "Wrong, I must have- I must have been wrong, Lestrade." John's not sure he's ever heard Sherlock Holmes say _that_ before, but it's barely surprising at all laid against the rest of this night. Sherlock jerked himself upright and glared at Lestrade, as if any error of his was surely traceable back to the police.

"This is the same ammunition Adair was killed with," someone announced outside John's field of vision.

"Coincidence," Sherlock said.

"That's the first time I've ever heard you say that word, you know," Lestrade said. "He's exactly where you said Adair's killer would be, with the right type of weapon, _trying to kill you_ , which is what you said Adair's killer would do. That's not a coincidence. That's reasonable grounds, is what that is."

Suddenly John's mind turned over, and he recognized that the man he'd fired three bullets at, the man he'd come here with every intention of cold-bloodedly murdering, was _Sherlock Holmes_. John swallowed down great gulps of air and tried to control his stomach. He wanted to be sick. He wanted to faint. He wanted to break down in hysterics. He didn't know what he wanted to do, only he felt that he was about to fly to pieces and Sherlock was still giving him that look of sick horror as if he was about to throw up himself.

"Sherlock," John rasped out. "I'm sorry, I didn't- I thought-"

"John, _shut up,_ " Lestrade snapped. "You're under arrest on suspicion of the murder of Ronald Adair. You don't have to say anything, if you rely in court on something you neglect to mention during questioning it may hurt your defense, but anything you say can be given in evidence so don't say _another bloody word_ until we can get this mess sorted out. Blake, Sorensen, put him in the van, Rafia, get forensics up here, Sherlock, with me."

* * *

They left him sitting in an interrogation room, single conference table and a surveillance camera over the door, for some period of time. Time was sort of left hanging, in a space like that: no watches, no clocks, nothing but your own thoughts to focus on. John had a few too many of those, this time around. Relief and love were all mixed up in his head with anger and fear. Sherlock was alive. He'd secretly and shame-facedly prayed and wished for that very thing for weeks and months until he’d finally left those vain hopes behind, and now that Sherlock had wrought this final miracle, John hardly knew how to process it.

He wanted to touch him, to look at his face, to take his pulse and know that this was real, that what he saw and felt on the sidewalk outside Bart's a year ago was fake. It was totally irrational, because he had no doubt that what happened in the flat was real- even John couldn't dream something that horrible- but it would be just bloody like fate to give Sherlock back and then snatch him away again. He'd be attacked and killed for real, or he'd just walk away and it would be like he'd never come back at all.

Just like he'd fucking walked away the first time. Was it possible to hug someone and punch them at the same time? John felt compelled to try it. But then, he _had_ hurt Sherlock already, nearly shot him in fact. And if that wasn't the nightmare to end all nightmares, if the police hadn't come, flipping on the lights and looking at the face of the corpse to see it was his best friend. John closed his eyes for a moment and breathed deeply to will away his nausea.

The door clicked open, and when John opened his eyes, Sherlock was there.

His face was more hollow, John could see. His ribs were more prominent. He obviously hadn't been eating or sleeping well, and the way he carried himself had shifted: less graceful, more furtive, his habitual tics quicker and less showy. He opened his mouth, but stood silent for a moment, staring openly at John.

John realized it was going to be down to him to break the silence. "So," he said. "Not dead then."

"No," Sherlock said. He cleared his throat and spoke more firmly. "No. Not dead." Silence descended again. Sherlock sat himself in a metal folding chair across the table from John.

"'It's just a magic trick,'" John said. He started to giggle, despite everything. "Oh my god. Sherlock." His giggles turned into full-throated laughter, almost hysterical, he couldn't seem to control it. _This is shock_ , he told himself, and put his head down on his cuffed hands and laughed helplessly.

When he looked back up, Sherlock was just staring at him. He wet his lips. "You remember that?"

John was speared by affection. "You moron," he said. "You great fucking idiot. I watched you kill yourself! I remember every word you said, you stupid, infuriating bastard!" John scrubbed his laughter-reddened face on one sleeve. "And then I had to recite it all for the police. And the inquest. Oh Christ, the inquest, that was a bloody nightmare. The papers fucking loved that: 'fake genius kills self, admits fraud.' Kitty Riley got a book deal out of it, the bitch." Sherlock kept staring. "Are you going to say something, or what?"

"I'm having trouble reading you," Sherlock said. That was probably as close as Sherlock could come to saying _I don't know what to say_. Well, John didn't know what to say either and it wasn't stopping him. "Are you angry? I expected you to be angry."

"Yes," John said at once. Paused. "Maybe. I don't know. I'm confused, Sherlock. This morning you were dead and I was the most boring nobody in London, and now you're alive and I'm a murder suspect." John was still babbling, but he couldn't seem to stop. "I've been mad at you for ages, except I guess I was mad about the wrong thing. Because you didn't subject me to watching my best friend die, you subjected me to watching my best friend die AND grieving for a year while you snickered about how bloody clever you were. You _bastard_." John was breathing hard, and he felt tears stinging at the corners of his eyes.

"I wasn't laughing," Sherlock said quietly.

"Well- good," John said. He rubbed his face on his sleeve again.

"I won't say I'm sorry I did it," Sherlock said. No, of course not. John opened his mouth but Sherlock kept going. "But I'm sorry I had to hurt you, John. Moriarty-"

"Oh God," John interrupted. "Moriarty. Is he still alive too?” Please, please, if anything was real about that day, let it be Moriarty’s death.

"Moriarty is really dead. He really shot himself," Sherlock said. John had no reason to believe him, not really. Nothing made sense right now, nothing was as John had thought, but even though he now knew for a fact that Sherlock could lie to him, did lie to him, John still wasn't smart enough to distrust him. The set in his jaw, the tone of his voice, said Sherlock was telling the truth. And, John reminded himself, it wasn't as if John couldn't tell that Sherlock was lying that day- he just hadn't realized that the lie went beyond claiming to be a fake, that the lie was masking the fact that the entire suicide was a set-up.

"Okay," John said, sighing. "Okay."

"He was going to kill you," Sherlock blurted out.

"What?" John said.

Sherlock jutted out his jaw. "Moriarty," he said. "Was going to kill you. And Lestrade, and Mrs. Hudson. His fairy tale ended with me dying in disgrace."

And in an instant, John believed that too. "Christ," he breathed. He had often thought about what could have made Sherlock jump- he never really believed that Sherlock cared that much about being disgraced. As he'd said, if people thought him a fraud it just proved their stupidity. What bothered him about Moriarty's plan had been being beaten, and that hadn't depressed him, it enraged him. It had occurred to John that Moriarty might have had some leverage to make Sherlock jump, but then why would he shoot himself? "So he threatened us. But why-"

"He knew it was the only way to make me respond, John," Sherlock said at once, answering entirely the wrong question. "He's known since the pool, although it took me considerably longer to- John, you know I feel- I harbor a great deal of affection towards-"

And just like that, John was off into hysterics again, laughing so hard he ended up with a stitch in his side. "You are such an idiot," he wheezed, looking up through newly-bleary eyes at Sherlock, looking as sulky as an offended cat. "You'll shoot bombs and jump off of buildings but you're incapable of just saying I love you like a normal person." Sherlock opened his mouth, still pouting. "No, shut up. I love you too, but if I would have known that was you in the flat, I still would have belted you. You deserve it for putting me through that."

"Who did you think I was?" Sherlock asked.

John licked his lips. In the back of his mind, he was conscious that they were treading into territory that was very dangerous for him. "Nobody in particular," he said. "But I knew someone was coming in, going through your things." He clenched his fingers and his jaw, remembered rage.

"But I don't understand," Sherlock said. John glanced up at his face which was open and honestly puzzled in a way that sent fond nostalgia sliding through John's middle. "You haven't lived there in a year. Why would it bother you?"

"Sentiment," John said, and didn't bother to stifle his follow up, "You idiot." Sherlock still looked puzzled, as if even after admitting his own great _affection_ for John, he was still incapable of understanding a simple attachment to a friend's memory. "Imagine," John said, "That Moriarty's man had shot me-"

"Don't," Sherlock said.

John hesitated for a second before he plowed on. "Imagine that one of his other people came to the flat, while you weren't there, and went up to my old room, and you caught him pawing through my drawers, opening up my laptop and reading my e-mail-"

Sherlock's face was stuck somewhere between bemusement and horror. "Ah," he said. "I think I see."

"Well," John said.

There was a brief pause, and Sherlock tensed as if gathering himself for something. "I was hunting Moriarty's men," he said. "Shutting down his web. There was still a risk, if I was known to be alive, that his assassins would still-" Sherlock swallowed.

"So why come back to Baker Street?" John asked. "Why now?" Sherlock's eyes flicked away, and John followed the look to the camera in the corner. Dangerous territory again. "Adair. He was Moriarty's man. You were after him, but when you got here he was already dead." Sherlock was looking at him very strangely: frowning, face pinched as when John had missed some startlingly obvious conclusion that Sherlock had seen in a moment, but his eyes were also lit up with delight. "What?"

"Adair was killed by bullets fired from the roof a building across the street from his home," Sherlock said. John's stomach sank a bit, although of course he knew it was easy enough for any forensic technician, much less Sherlock, to predict a bullet trajectory. "I believed that Adair's killer would panic when he realized I was after him, and attempt to kill me in the same manner. So I attempted to lure him out by stationing myself in Baker Street, with Lestrade and his officers waiting at the most likely vantage point for the killer to use. Clearly my interpretation of the various factors at play was mistaken." Sherlock leaned forward very slightly. "We have no real indication of who was on that rooftop the day Adair died."

It was a splash of relief cooling the fear and panic that had begun to creep over John when Sherlock started talking about Adair's death. He reminded himself of the truth of what he'd told Seb: _it was a clean op_. He'd been careful not to appear on CCTV in or near the building, or to be seen by residents or staff. Ballistics would prove that John's gun was the murder weapon, but the crucial point was that _no one could put the gun in his hand at the time of the murder_. Without any other evidence linking John to Adair, the worst they could prove against him was illegal possession of a handgun. That was five to ten years, which was a terrifying prospect, but not nearly as terrifying as life imprisonment for murder. And they probably couldn't even prove that he assaulted Sherlock without Sherlock's testimony, which-

John's thoughts stumbled to a halt in a new wave of confusion. Sherlock seemed to be on his side. He was clearly warning John not to tip his hand, hinting about how weak the evidence was. But was it only because Sherlock thought he was mistaken in his deductions, that John couldn't possibly be the killer? John didn't especially mind telling the police he was innocent of Adair's murder- he didn't feel guilty about killing one of Moriarty's scum, he didn't think Sherlock would be especially outraged either- but he couldn't bear to lie to Sherlock. He hated the idea of Sherlock putting all his restored reputation and his enormous intellect into defending John, with no idea that he really was guilty of the crime. But he couldn't confess to Sherlock in an interrogation room at New Scotland Yard; he was in front of a camera, for God's sake.

He needed to get the hell out of here. But bail, pending an indictment for murder? The odds were low.

The door clicked open. Lestrade wore the look of exasperated resignation that always seemed to stick naturally to his face when Sherlock was around. "Come on, Sherlock," he said. "I think that's about enough for now, don't you?"

* * *

John was guilty as hell, but he was also not stupid, so when they sent Lestrade in to soften him up he immediately demanded legal advice and then shut his mouth.

They sent him to the duty solicitor, a podgy man named David: so young that he made John feel nearly ancient in comparison. He was sharp enough though, as he quickly assessed the situation John had been thrown into. "They'll never prove murder unless you confess, which you shouldn't do by the way," David said. “Whether you did it or not.”

John couldn't restrain a grin at that. "Good advice," he said.

"Well, you'd be shocked how many people end up ignoring it," David said. Despite his youth, he had the same air of resigned cynicism common to soldiers and police.

"No I wouldn't," John said. He'd seen enough criminal suspects interviewed to know how even the terribly clever could be easily persuaded to give themselves away. Sherlock always said the clever ones were actually the easiest to trip up.

"They've basically got four days to charge you. 96 hours, to be exact," David said. "They know they’re short on evidence, so they’ll probably put off charging as long as they can while they try to gather more. They'll get a warrant for your flat and see what they turn up there, for starters. And if their time runs out and they still can't charge you with murder, they'll charge you with possession of the gun and with assault on- oh, Sherlock Holmes, I know him."

"Do you?" John said, unsurprised. Every solicitor in London knew enough of Sherlock Holmes to either shake their heads or shake their fists at him.

"I thought he was dead," David said, looking up from his notes at John.

"Well," John said. "He basically was."

* * *

John went quietly and obediently to every interview they took him to, but he sat next to David and he declined to answer most of the questions. Lestrade, who was present during several of the interviews, was visibly frustrated; John was pretty sure that he thought John was innocent of the murder, and genuinely didn't understand why John wouldn't help them solve it. Lestrade was not someone John could ever confide in about what he'd been up these past few years. But he remained convinced, or perhaps just hopeful, that Sherlock would understand when John told him. Sherlock had gone on his own hunt through Moriarty's network; surely he would be pleased that John had, in his own way, joined his quest.

Sherlock showed up to one interview. "Isn't Dr. Watson accused of assault against Mr. Holmes?" David asked, frowning. "I don't think it's appropriate for him to be here for this."

"It's okay," John said. "I don't mind."

Sherlock sat slumped in his chair off to one side, but didn't contribute anything beyond frequent eye contact to the proceedings. John wondered that Sherlock was allowed to participate in his interrogation, given their close relationship; perhaps the police thought that John would open up to Sherlock. But this still wasn't the time or the place.

The chief questioner in that interview was a Detective Superintendent Dovecote: about Lestrade's age, but balding and with an expression suggesting permanent constipation. He had a habit of incessantly tapping his pen on the edge of the table when he grew irritated. "What can you tell us about Ronald Adair?" he asked, tapping.

"You should answer that," Sherlock piped up from his corner.

"No you shouldn't," David said promptly. John knew he was right: there was no particular reason why John should have any knowledge of or interest in Adair. 

John looked at David, then at Sherlock, who raised an eyebrow at him. His eyes were shining brightly again but his face was otherwise calm: suppressed excitement. There was something important here. _Trust me_ , Sherlock was practically screaming, as if a year's absence had somehow rendered John unable to read his body language. 

"He was a financier who owned a number of City firms.” That was safe to admit. Anything further could be dangerous. John glanced at Sherlock and then back at Dovecote. “He worked for Jim Moriarty, laundering his money and sometimes distributing operational funds," John said.

"And what's he been doing now that Moriarty's dead?" Dovecote asked. His voice was bland but he wasn't fidgeting any more. No longer irritated...interested. That meant the question was significant. 

John looked at Sherlock. "Answer that one, too," Sherlock said.

David slapped his palm down on the table. "I strenuously object! This is unbelievably inappropriate in every-"

"John," Sherlock said quietly. His low tones cut smoothly through David's shriller protests.

"Using all that money for himself, I assume. The papers say he's about to be indicted for money laundering." Was Dovecote asking because he genuinely wanted to know what Adair was up to and thought John knew? Because he already knew the answer and wanted to see if John did, too? Or was it because the more interest John expressed in Adair’s activities, the more plausible a suspect he became? John licked his lips and ventured, "Also, I'm pretty sure he's been reinvesting some of Moriarty's money in a human trafficking scheme based in Odessa." 

Total silence. "His UK contact for the network is a man named Paul Bartosh." The quiet was terrifying- had he overplayed his hand? John had to fight back the urge to babble.

"How in the _hell_ do you know that?" demanded Dovecote. It felt like the atmosphere had suddenly rushed back into the vacuum left behind by John’s answer. Dovecote was surprised, but also angry, apparently. Why? What had he expected John to say?

"John, who was Adair working for? Most recently." Sherlock's gaze was steady. John had no idea where he was going with this.

"Himself," John said, giving up his attempt to puzzle out who knew what about whom. "No one else, since Moriarty died."

Sherlock unfolded himself abruptly from the chair. "Thank you Detective Superintendent," he said. "I believe that's all I need."

"Hey," Dovecote began angrily, "You were here to observe, not to-" But Sherlock was already out the door.

* * *

They reached the halfway mark on the time limit: 48 hours, 2 full days in custody. John was haggard, tired and worried, but not mistreated despite the police's evident eagerness to close the books on Adair's murder. David ensured John got his requisite 8-hour rest periods; John just didn't use them for sleep. Instead he lay staring at the ceiling, wondering how the hell his life turned into this. Wondering what Sherlock was doing.

The answer to the latter became evident when John was escorted to one of the smaller, unbugged interview rooms, designed for suspects to consult with their solicitors. He was there alone for less than a minute before Sherlock slipped in wearing a Met Police uniform and shut the door behind him.

John was already grinning. "You really don't do well when I'm not around to stop you taking insane risks, do you?"

"You never stopped me," Sherlock said, the corners of his mouth quirking slightly upward.

"I at least made you think longer before you took them," John amended.

"Quiet," Sherlock said, all trace of levity banished from his expression. "Our time is very limited and you need to listen. I was working under artificial limitations so it took longer than expected, but I've finally solved Adair's murder."

John's stomach sank. "Listen, Sherlock, I-"

"Shut up!" Sherlock jabbed an accusatory finger at him. "You're about to tell me that you killed Adair. The sentiment is appreciated but I already know that and you need to hear this." Sherlock began to pace the tiny room in short, quick strides. "I told you before that I originally deduced that Adair's murderer would panic and attempt to kill me when he realized that I was investigating the killing. Obviously I was forced to reevaluate the evidence when I discovered that the man who tried to kill me was in fact you. Further observation made it clear that you had not turned against me and in fact were not even aware that I was alive.

"However, it was still clear that the man who tried to kill me, you, and the man who murdered Adair were one and the same. My initial read of the evidence was confirmed again when the police raided your bedsit and found several boxes of ammunition, all partially empty, making it obvious that the P99 was a weapon you had used previously and in fact was probably not the only such gun you had owned.”

"Oh Jesus," John breathed, but Sherlock didn't pause to rebuke him that time. His words just kept rolling on.

"You matched up fairly well with my previous profile of Adair's killer, however knowing you and having had the chance to observe that your morals had not radically altered since I've been away, the question became: why would a man like you kill a man like Adair? I suspected that you had become aware of Adair's connection to Moriarty. There were several possible channels for that information but obviously you didn't hear it from me, nor from the police, nor from Mycroft, who assures me that the two of you have not had any meaningful communication since my funeral. The search of your flat also turned up a burner mobile which contained no record of communications other than an exchange of text messages perhaps a week before Adair was shot. Four from you, six from the other person, initiated by that person. The messages are oblique on their face but in context show that this person both directed you to Ronald Adair and informed you that he was a person of significance to 'JM,' which under the circumstances can only mean James Moriarty.

"The police interview yesterday confirmed that you had detailed and accurate knowledge of Adair's criminal activities, including recent acts. Significantly, you professed your belief that Adair was working solely in his own interest. The motive is therefore simple: the desire to close off a link of Moriarty's network which has and does provide significant resources to criminal activities. I suspect, knowing your moral sense, that you found Adair's foray into sexual slavery particularly disgusting. I applaud your investigative skills but I cannot approve of the result, as Adair's most recent activities were part of a police operation developed by Interpol in cooperation with the Met."

There was a roaring in John's ears that he couldn't seem to think through. "What?" he finally said.

"Adair was persuaded by the threat of indictment and the collapse of his fortune and his luxurious lifestyle to cooperate with the police," Sherlock said. "He entered the confidence of the sex traffickers, amongst others, by extending the offer of funding. His previous association with Moriarty as well as his monetary resources are strong credentials in the criminal underworld, as you can imagine."

"I- he was working for the police?" John asked. He wished he could say he felt lost, but his mind was all too clear. "I didn't know."

"Clearly," Sherlock said. His eyes were still bright with excitement, but with his spiel over he seemed less manic, more sympathetic. "You confirmed in that interview that you had no inkling Adair had any master except himself. If you had known he was cooperating with the police, you never would have targeted him. That places the blame squarely on the person who directed you to Adair, knowing that you could be manipulated into killing him."

"Manip- what do you take me for, Sherlock?" John demanded. "I wasn't manipulated. I made a _choice_. Which, okay, turned out to be a mistake."

"Adair was killed because he was cooperating with the authorities," Sherlock repeated. "He was selling out some of Moriarty's former clients. He was starting to talk about his work for Moriarty. Why direct your attention to Adair now, at this moment, unless to silence him?"

"Coincidence," John said. He didn't know. Seb couldn't have known. It was just bad luck, bad timing.

"Tell me this, then," Sherlock said. "Was this person also the source of the information that someone was 'going through my things' at Baker Street?" John hesitated, which was evidently answer enough. "Yes, I thought so. Is that a coincidence too, that this supposedly innocent source of yours behaved exactly the way a man panicking over my sudden return for the dead would have?"

"Yes," John snapped.

"There's a pattern, John," Sherlock said. "All crime is patterns, you're just not _seeing_ it. I haven't mentioned it to the police but Adair's killer matched a profile. It's a profile I know well, because I've encountered it over and over investigating Moriarty's associates. A military veteran, crack shot, strong moral sense, who prefers handguns, abhors collateral damage and only kills men with concrete connections to Moriarty's network. I had never thought to connect this profile to you, simply because the deaths always occurred in a way that was advantageous to a particular man, a former member of the network. I deduced that the killer was working for that man."

What Sherlock was suggesting was earth-shaking, horrible- and wrong. "No," John said, but again Sherlock rolled over him.

"So, I was right about the motive for the murder of Adair and the identification of the killer, I simply missed that the triggerman was in fact _you_. And now that I've solved it, it's absurdly simple to extricate you from this mess _and_ complete the mission I faked my death for. The police are furious about losing their informant, but we can give them something better: the identity of an international terrorist who worked with Moriarty and is rebuilding his network in his own image. If the police refuse to cooperate we simply go to Mycroft, who can strip the Met's jurisdiction over your prosecution on national security grounds and ensure that you are not prosecuted for murder and are treated with utmost lenience on the unavoidable firearms charge."

Sherlock was smiling now, so confident in his conclusions. He spread his arms wide. "All you have to do is help us catch Sebastian Moran."

John's head was starting to throb, just behind his eyes. He felt weak and wrung out, as if Sherlock's words had stripped all his composure. But his hand was steady. "No," he said.

"No?" Sherlock looked utterly flabbergasted. "But John, it's perfect. And now's the time, we have to get him before he disappears again."

" _No_ ," John repeated. He scrubbed his hands through his hair, trying desperately to think. Sherlock said they searched his flat and recovered the phone. Did Seb know? Did he know about John's arrest? He didn't babysit John on assignments, that ran counter to the whole point, but he was the one who warned John someone was at Baker Street, so maybe this time...

"I don't understand," Sherlock said. His hands came up as if to mirror John's gesture, then snapped back to his sides. "I've been hunting him for ages, this is the closest I've ever gotten, and-"

"You're wrong!" John practically shouted, then clamped a hand over his mouth, inhaling deeply through his nose. He tried to calm himself. All they were doing was talking, so why did he feel so out of control? His heart was pounding.

Sherlock stared at him in silence for a second before a look of comprehension dawned. "You already knew him before he recruited you." John didn't answer, which Sherlock seemed to take for assent. "Oh stupid, stupid, I always miss _something_. He's English but you didn't grow up together; he didn't go to university so that's out. You're both military of course but that didn't occur to me because he wasn't RAMC, maybe you treated- no, but it's more than a passing acquaintance, or-"

"Shut up!" John snapped. "Just, bloody- shut up, all right?" He took one deep breath, then another. "When did they search my flat?"

"They started just an hour or so ago," Sherlock said. "I came straight from there."

John bit back his next question. Sherlock wouldn't know if they've looked at his mobile yet, and asking would give the game away. Anyway, they probably haven't had time. Or with luck, they wouldn't have interpreted the texts yet. It would be just like Sherlock to read them, make his own deductions, and swan off to recite his conclusions to John without saying anything to the police, wouldn't it? Yes, of course. "Has any of this been in the news?" If Seb didn't know what had happened, if the mess hadn't been reported, possibly he could still reach Seb at the same number.

"No, they're keeping it quiet, probably until they file charges. Interpol wants-" Sherlock, who had been watching John's face as he spoke, suddenly cut himself off. "You're thinking about contacting him."

John shook his head once, but the denial was useless; Sherlock always could read him too well, even when John intentionally averted his eyes to prevent it. "You are. John, that's a bad idea."

John couldn't help but laugh at that. "This, coming from the king of the bad ideas?"

Sherlock just kept going. "Don't you understand? As soon as he realizes you've been compromised, he'll run, and we'll be ages getting anywhere near him again. I told you, I've been chasing him for-"

"How do you know?" John bit out. "Have you ever seen this person you're after? Heard their voice? Do they even use their real name? How would you be able to tell?"

"You know my methods, John," Sherlock said quietly. "You better than anyone."

John felt a little guilty at that, but then he caught himself and thought with a surge of anger that he'd be _damned_ if he felt guilty. "I do know you, which is how I know you're not infallible. You make mistakes."

"Not about this," Sherlock said. "John, I thought Moriarty was the hardest case of my career, but it pales in comparison to this. An entire year of this case, and nothing but this case- it consumed me, I ate and slept and _breathed_ it, and if I'm wrong about my conclusions, if I'm wrong about Moran, I'm wrong about everything. Absolutely everything, John, I swear to you I'm not mistaken."

"I can't," John said, low. "Sherlock, you don't- try and imagine if...well, I hate to say me, but I can't think of anyone else you've been close enough to. Try and imagine if someone came to you and told you that I was working against you, that our whole friendship was a lie. How much evidence would it take before you would believe that of me?"

"I-" Sherlock hesitated. "John, the situation is not analogous at all. I know you wouldn't do that. You're a good man-" John almost laughed again, wondering where Sherlock's line of good versus evil was, if he knew as much about John's activities over the past few years as he said. "-a man with a strong moral code. Moran is- he was dishonorably discharged, all my military sources agreed. He was Moriarty's man, one of the most trusted, the executioner. That day at Bart's, he held a gun on you in case I failed to kill myself, he-"

"Stop!" John barked. "Just, stop. You don't know him, Sherlock. You've built this picture, of this person you've been hunting for, and maybe you're right about that. But you think that picture matches up with Seb, and you're wrong. Because the man you're describing- it's not him, it's not the man I know."

"Seb," Sherlock said softly.

"Yes. I know him, all right? I met him in the army. I'm not getting into the whole story, but I know him like nobody else alive knows him," John said. "And I need to talk to him, because he can straighten this mess out. We can sort it. And then we can finish shutting down Moriarty's web, you and me, we can finish and we can go home and this will be _over_." John blinked away moisture from his eyes. He was suddenly just _done_ with this whole fucking thing, all of it. He wanted to be sitting in a chair across from Sherlock, beside the fireplace at 221b, so badly that it made the back of his throat ache. "He wouldn't betray me, Sherlock."

"John," Sherlock sounded almost helpless. "John, he already has."

"I need to talk to him," John repeated. "And you know I can't do that here."

Sherlock was shaking his head slowly, but he didn't look away and his expression was uncertain.

"Please, Sherlock," John said. "Can't you trust me, just once? I never stopped trusting you, even after-" He cut himself off from finishing, realizing that using Sherlock's "death" that way just felt too nasty. 

But it was too late, Sherlock clearly already saw the implication. He flinched visibly, and his gaze shifted away. "I can't-" He paused for nearly a minute, clenching and unclenching his hands as if unaware of them, then suddenly spat out the words all in a rush, "I only made it back because I knew you were here waiting. If I lost you now-" That seemed to be the limit of what he had planned to say on the topic. His jaw snapped shut.

"Please," John said.

Sherlock sucked in a long draw of air through his teeth and hissed it back out. He locked eyes with John again. "All right," he said. "I'll help you."

* * *

It turned out to be surprisingly easy to escape from New Scotland Yard; if you were Sherlock Holmes, anyway. John suspected he would have had a more difficult time of it. But Sherlock seemed to know every unmonitored or underutilized hallway in the building, and he escorted John through a veritable maze of them, ending at a rear door that was theoretically for emergency use only.

John hesitated before pushing his way out through the door. "Can you- is this going to get you arrested? I hate to see you a fugitive again so soon after you've reestablished yourself with the police." _Smooth, Watson_ , John thought, wincing. _Maybe the time for that concern was before you guilted him into helping a multiple murderer escape from custody._

The corners of Sherlock's mouth twitched. "I'll manage," he said. "You're the only fugitive this time, I'm afraid."

"I deserve to be, though," John said soberly.

Sherlock frowned at him. "Here," he said, and from his rear waistband, produced a gun that he pressed into John's hands. 

He checked the magazine and cleared the chamber almost automatically, as he visually sized the gun up. It was a Glock 17, sleek and matte black. "Please tell me you didn't nick this from the Yard's armory," he said. "Or- this didn't come from an evidence locker somewhere, did it?"

"How little faith you have in me," Sherlock said, rolling his eyes. "It's mine." He paused for a moment, watching John shove the gun into his waistband and tug his shirt out of his jeans to hide it. "John- I do trust you, you know. It's Moran I don't trust."

John turned away and shoved the door's push bar, suppressing his urge to lash out at Sherlock and start the argument all over again.

Sherlock caught his sleeve a moment before John shook him off. "Just be careful," he said. "Please."

John slipped out the emergency exit and, for the second time in a year, officially became a wanted man.

* * *

It took John forever to find a phone box sufficiently far from the Yard that he felt safe calling Seb’s most recent mobile number. The phone rang out and John hung up without leaving a message and immediately called back.

“We need to talk,” he said as soon as the line connected.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Seb demanded. “You're breaking protocol, you're supposed to wait for the next package.” John felt dizzy with relief. Seb obviously hadn't heard about the arrest, or the raid.

“I need to see you in person,” he blurted. To Seb, it must seem a very odd request indeed; they hadn't met in person since the Caffe Nero, ages ago. All their contact was by text and the occasional phone call, or by the packages that showed up via different messengers and always with different postmarks.

“Why? What's going on? Didn't you finish the job?” Seb sounded suspicious, or was that just John's overtired brain reading things into his tone?

“Sherlock Holmes is alive, he was at the flat,” John said. “He was _at the flat_ for God's sake.”

There was a long, long pause. John could barely hear Seb's breathing down the line. “What happened?”

Seb wasn't Sherlock's friend, so John had no reason to expect shock or excitement or anything else from him, but still something in John's gut was uneasy about the lack of emotion in Seb's response. That same something whispered to John, _lie, lie, lie_. So he did. “I barely got out,” John said. “I've been lying low. I'm...confused. I need to talk to you. Privately, in person.”

Another lengthy pause, before Seb finally said. “All right. Is this line clear?”

“It's a phone box,” John said. He felt a bit better when Seb immediately took his word for it and gave him the address of a warehouse all the way out in Tower Hamlets.

He took buses, figuring if the Yard had noticed he was missing, they'd be more likely to be watching the Tube. When he reached the warehouse, he circled it and found it apparently abandoned. He let himself in by breaking a padlock with a chunk of cement. Despite the length of his journey he had to wait another half hour or so, growing more and more agitated, until Seb walked in. He was wearing jeans and a leather jacket, no sunglasses, and he hadn't changed a bit.

“So, I'm here,” Seb said, stopping just a couple feet from where John waited. “And Holmes is alive? I hope you haven't done anything too unbearably stupid.”

John still hadn't quite got his footing, but he'd had more than enough time to think about what he wanted to address with Seb. “He's alive. And he knows about you; although he seems to think you were Moriarty's right hand man, and you're taking over where he left off.”

“You _talked_ to him?” Seb sounded disgusted. “Christ, Jove. I thought you had more spine than that. The man pretends to commit suicide while you're watching, and he reappears after you've grieved him a year and you're back to hanging on his every word.”

It was a deflection. A good one, because John was very tempted to argue the point, but he forced himself to concentrate on what Seb _wasn't_ saying. “No, see, your line here ought to be 'No, Jove, I don't know why he thinks that, but it's bullshit.'” Seb didn't say anything, not for long minutes. And John, awash in the realization that _Sherlock was right_ , didn't say anything either. All at once, he felt drained and sick, as if the only thing powering him had been his faith that Sherlock was wrong and a simple talk with Seb would sort the whole mess out.

“I'd stopped thinking we were gonna need to have this conversation,” Seb finally said, half to himself. He fished a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and lit one, avoiding John's eyes. “Fucking Holmes.”

“ _Fuck_ , Seb,” John said, feeling staggered by the number of things Seb had just admitted he was fully aware of, the number of things he wasn't denying.

"What did you do when they threw you out, Jove?" Seb asked. It's the first and only time they've talked about it, since their reunion.

John paused for a minute. Every statement Seb had made so far felt like it was coming from a different direction, until John didn't know what to expect next. “Came home, did fuck-all for a while, met Sherlock.”

“No,” Seb said. “I mean, when the Major called you into his office and you realized he was going to fuck you the way he fucked me. What did you do?”

“I walked away,” John said. Seb was already shaking his head. “I told him no thanks and left the outfit. It's not the same as it was for you, I had a choice.”

"Bullshit,” Seb said. “They didn't court martial you, but they still fucked you over. What did they offer, if you stayed? Send you back to the RAMC like a whipped dog?"

That landed close enough to sting. "A job at headquarters," he admitted.

"A desk job, for a senior special forces operative," Seb sneered. He gestured at John with his lit cigarette. "A permanent slot in the roster as Johnny, November Foxtrot's loveable crippled mascot. You gave them the bowfingers, but that doesn't mean you didn't get thrown out."

"I still had a choice," John said.

"So did I, I could have eaten a gun," Seb said. "Would have been less of a pain to the brass, no loose ends to worry about. But I didn't. I fought it out at the court martial, ended up giving them the show they wanted, and so I ended up the same way you did. On the junk heap. What was I supposed to do, go to work stocking shelves? Sit around and cry? Did you?"

"A bit," John said. "Till I met Sherlock."

"Yeah, you met Sherlock Holmes. And he kicked you in your arse and made you get moving again. I know that, because that's exactly what Jim Moriarty did to me."

"How lucky for you he was in the market for washed out special operatives," John said, deadpan. His confusion was slowly congealing into anger, now, as Seb sketched out parallels between the two of them.

"He was actually looking for a military man with an expert knowledge of munitions and an ability to think on his feet," Seb said. "The fact that I had special ops training was just a bonus. And I had some intel that helped him connect up with potential customers in the Middle East." He coolly took a drag on his cigarette.

John's stomach turned. "That's where the analogy stops, Seb," he said, glad there was something there to clearly hang his anger on. "I was pretty much done before I met Sherlock, all right. I've done some things that weren't totally legal, working with him." Try very, very illegal, but that wasn't the point. "But I didn't decide it was okay to fucking switch sides because I was in a snit with the command staff, right? That's not fucking on. I never thought that- I'm hearing you say this, and I still can't believe it."

"Oh, grow _up,_ Jove!” Seb had the nerve to actually roll his eyes, as if John were being melodramatic. “Don't try to sell me that Queen and country crap, like the army is in fucking Afghanistan to stop hajis from rampaging through the streets of Westminster. The politicians didn't put us on the ground to save the world, they put us there to get one set of shitheads out of power and another set in, _their_ set. We both know nobody's winning that fucking war. So what the hell difference does it make which side is up today when they're going to be back down tomorrow?" Seb didn't even sound angry, just flatly matter-of-fact.

"Look, the Army fucked you over, they fucked me over," John said. "You can go ahead and be bitter, nobody can say you aren’t entitled. But those are still our guys out there on the ground. And when you help the people they're fighting-"

"Don't you dare lecture me about patriotism, don't you fucking dare," Seb snapped, jabbing his cigarette at John. "I'm not a kid. They all knew what they were signing up for. _We_ all knew. Don't try to make it sound like I'm out there shooting at our guys just because I sell the bullets that're getting shot at them. That's political horseshit."

"Oh, so you're not required to give a shit about anyone you're not actively serving with," John said. "I get it now. Is that why it was so easy to fucking lie to me?" There it was, the heart of the anger that was bubbling up in him, thick and acrid, ready to boil over.

"I didn't-"

"Bull _shit_ ,” John said harshly. The words didn't require further thought, they were spilling out of a well of confusion and rage that Sherlock's revelations had started filling and Seb had just topped up. “If you stand there and try to say you didn't lie to me, Seb, I swear to god I will fucking kill you with my bare hands. You told me you didn't work for Moriarty. And then you fucking strung me along, you deceived me about what I was doing, treating me like some kind of ignorant lackey."

"How did I string you along?” Seb asked. “I promised you leads, intel that would let you shut down parts of Moriarty's network, and that's what you got. I told you first thing- I need a subcontractor. I was going to pay you, you're the one who insisted on making it a fucking moral thing. Every lead I gave you was straight up." He sounded so unconcerned, that was the worst of it. As if _John_ was the one being unreasonable here.

"Oh, you just what, _forgot_ that you were Moriarty's lieutenant, and that every lead you gave me just _happened_ to be someone you wanted eliminated to consolidate your hold on his network?"

"That wasn't part of the deal," Seb insisted. "Every guy you took out was one of Moriarty's men, and every one of them was guilty of doing evil shit. Christ, you want to talk about morals, those guys all deserved to die. You thought so when you killed them. Now you want to say they deserved to live, because killing them helped me out? Talk about your fucking situational ethics, Jove, that is classic." Seb dropped the cigarette he'd let burn down past its filter while he argued with John, and went about lighting a new one.

“You think so fucking little of me, it kills me,” John said, bitterly. “You haven't bothered to try to convince me I'm wrong, or that I should keep working with you.”

Seb shook his head. “What, do I look stupid? Obviously you're going to go back to Holmes, there's no point trying to convince you otherwise. I get it. If Jim walked back into my life and said fuck what you've been doing for a year, follow me, I'd drop it all and go in a fucking heartbeat.”

“Then why?” John demanded. The myriad of questions that connected to that single word hung over them both: why John, why the deceit, why all of it.

“I told you- I needed someone I could trust. I never told you a lie, Jove.” John just laughed at that, shaking his head. “There were a couple things I didn't tell you, all right. But that was true.”

“So, what, without Moriarty or Sherlock to divide us into teams, you thought- hey, let's hook up?”

Seb shrugged and took a long drag on his new cigarette. “It worked pretty well, didn't it? We both got something we wanted. And we weren't alone.” It made John a little sick to think how true that was; but the satisfaction he had felt over the past year didn’t justify the lies. He could see that even if Seb couldn’t.

“So what'll you do?” John asked. “Just keep going without me?”

“Sure,” Seb said. “It'll be harder with you on the other side, but you know I like a challenge. Knowing now that a lot of my problems were caused by Holmes- well, it makes me feel a bit better about not being able to solve them all.” He smiled through the wisps of cigarette smoke. “Maybe matching wits with him isn't as hard as Jim made it seem. Or maybe I've learned a few tricks.”

“You're a real piece of work, Seb,” John said. The bastard just grinned at him; he'd always thought that was a compliment. “You knew Adair had turned, right? Or at least that he wouldn't give you Moriarty's money.”

“It's rightfully my money at this point,” Seb said. “That little fuck always had delusions of grandeur. Finding out he was a rat just clinched it.”

John nodded, unsurprised. He’d known in his gut that Sherlock was right about Seb only telling John about Adair once he began working with Interpol; the timing was too much of a coincidence. “When you told me about the intruder at Baker Street, you warned me not to get in close quarters. You wanted me to shoot him from across the street.”

“Well you have to admit, I was right about what a fucking mess there'd be once you and Holmes got in the same room,” Seb said. He took another drag and smirked slightly at John, as if he thought sending him to murder Sherlock a joke.

“Yeah, okay,” John said.

He had the Glock out of his waistband before Seb could even flinch; unlike Seb, his best hand wasn't occupied by a cigarette.

John's ears rang from the double bark of the gun, even in this large space. He was too close with no ear protection and the sound bounced back from the high ceiling and distant walls in a way that made it seem louder still. Seb went down with two bullets in the heart, almost on top of each other; the second pull of the trigger had been a training reflex, as either one would have been enough to kill.

Almost before he lowered the muzzle, a hand fisted in the shoulder of his shirt and spun him round, and he was looking almost placidly up into Sherlock's face. “John, _John_ , you've killed him. That close, you had to have meant to, emergency first aid won't-” The rapid flood of conclusions shut off like a tripped safety valve, and Sherlock spat out, “ _Why?_ ” with a thunderous anger John was more used to seeing turned on bafflingly, inscrutably human witnesses and suspects.

“Because now it's done,” John said. He reached up with his empty hand and gently pried at the fingers clenched white on his shoulder. It had the intended effect of making Sherlock glance down at his own hand and release John as if he'd only just noticed his own death grip. “Stopping Moran, that completed your mission. You said so earlier.” Sherlock was shaking his head slowly, but John simply ignored it. “Moriarty is dead. You took down a lot of the network- right? That's what you were doing all this time. And I took down some. And now Moran is dead. What's left will fall to pieces without any central figures to take over.” It all made perfect sense, the disparate pieces locking together. John had been fighting for so long with no end in sight, only to suddenly look up and see the web behind him in tatters, ruined.

“There are still pieces- various criminal enterprises,” Sherlock said.

“There are always crimes, and criminals.” John smiled and felt brittle and jagged. He ought to be feeling furious or sad, something normal, but he only had a heavy, muffled numbness in the space in his chest where the emotions ought to be. “What would you do with yourself if there weren't?” Sherlock's face was twisted, but not with an answering smile; he looked more like he was about to throw up. “You can move back into Baker Street. Mrs. Hudson's obviously not been renting it out. You're back on good terms with the Met- they'll bring you cases. The private clients will come back when you announce your return. I expect it'll be on the news at some-”

“ _Stop it_ ,” Sherlock snapped out through his teeth. “That's all- you can't- Even Mycroft won't be able to help if all you have to offer is a _corpse_ , you have nothing to bargain with! Are you so incomprehensibly thick that you can't see the significance of killing Moran?”

John couldn't seem to lose the smile, even though it obviously wasn't funny. “Sherlock. You told me you followed my work, you know my profile. Did anything you saw strike you as the work of a man who doesn't understand the consequence of his actions?” Sherlock still looked nauseous.

“We can hide the body,” Sherlock said. His eyes flickered here and there, lighting on various objects without focusing, as he struggled to put together the disparate pieces into a cohesive plan. “I can convince Mycroft that Moran disappeared after speaking with you. You can still offer your cooperation-”

“No,” John said flatly. “I'm not going to pretend to hunt Moran for the rest of my life.” John thought about criminals he and Sherlock had pursued, how even the ones smart enough to conceal their crimes could snap: not from guilt, but from the strain of pretending to love someone they had despised enough to kill. Sherlock had shaken his head in bemusement at some of them, but John understood in his gut that there were some pretenses you could live with, and some you simply couldn’t.

“How is that different than what you spent the last year doing?” Sherlock snapped. “You were trying to fool Mycroft and everyone else you knew.”

“I always knew it was temporary,” John said. He'd never stopped to think about what he'd do when Moriarty's network had been destroyed, but it had still felt like a definite endpoint. “And- I’m not ashamed of what I’ve done.” He glanced down at Moran’s body, as if to check whether that was still true. But no, he felt regret that it had to happen, but no shame. “You said, earlier, that I was a good man,” John said, “but I'm really, really not.” 

“I know what you’ve done,” Sherlock said. John looked up and caught Sherlock watching him watch Moran’s corpse. “But you are.” John had braced himself for the look on Sherlock's face to change to disgusted realization, but that's not what he saw. It took John a second to recognize the expression, because he'd never seen that look on Sherlock before. It was the one that said _I've done things and seen things and so have you,_ the one John and the others in NF had sometimes showed each other before they went back out to do whatever objectively awful thing needed doing next.

“Spending the rest of my life passing Mycroft fake tips and pretending to be on the trail of a man who's already dead, that's different than what we've been doing,” John said after a moment. “You have to see it's different.”

Sherlock shook his head, not quite shrugging- yes, no, maybe. His shoulders were hunched now, as if he was curling in on himself in self-defense. His voice was a terrible mix of accusation and despair that a year ago would have made John want to break down. “I waited a year, John,” Sherlock said. “The whole time- every day I thought, _when I get home._ Or _when I see John again_.”

Something in John snapped at that, and he was laughing. Laughing and crying at once, bent over with his hands on his knees, in the sort of adrenaline shock he only ever seemed to get with Sherlock. “Oh Sherlock,” he said. “Jesus. I already said I'm not going to live as a fugitive, and I'm definitely not going to die. It's not the end of the world.”

Sherlock's face, when John looked again, was tight with worry and yes, still anger. “It's not all about you, you know,” John said. “Even if you're the one who died and then came back. You prat.” He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and only then realized what he was doing. “Shit. I need to wash my hands- and my face, apparently. And get rid of this gun.”

“You're not going to hide the body, then?” Sherlock asked. “I could-”

“No,” John said. “Call Mycroft. Or Lestrade. Or call 999 anonymously, whatever you think best. Just make sure he's identified as Moran. If he hasn't changed his fingerprints, it shouldn't be too hard.”

“Because of his military records,” Sherlock said. John nodded absently, already thinking about places to ditch the gun, donation bins where he could snag new clothes, finding a chain restaurant where he could semi-anonymously scrub up in the bathroom. “John. Will you- tell me about him?” John's eyes snapped back to Sherlock. He was still tense and angry, but there was uncertainty there too, hanging strangely on his features because John could count on one hand the number of times he'd seen him uncertain and worried about it.

It made John feel affectionate- a softness that bloomed from the grave where he'd buried the rest of his emotions. “Sometime I will,” he said.

Sherlock nodded, short and tight. He held his chin up and his back straight. “All right then,” he said. “I'll- I'll see you soon.”

“Yeah,” John said. “Probably.”

* * *

Sherlock was already there when John arrived, lounging in a plastic chair that was the opposite of ergonomic, drumming his fingers irritably on the edge of the laminate-topped table. “They made me leave my coat,” he said as John slid into the opposite chair. John grinned, feeling suddenly normal in a way that refreshed him more than any polite greeting could have.

“You weren't allowed into a secure facility with your voluminous, flapping cloak? I am so, so shocked,” John said. He took a second to just look Sherlock over. He was a bit less gaunt than he had been at the sentencing: his suit nearly fitted properly again. His face was filling out a bit and his hair was long enough to curl like it used to. The fact that he was up to his old standard of personal grooming meant he was probably readjusting to London, and the weight gain meant that he was letting _someone_ stuff him full of carbohydrates for a change- probably Mrs. Hudson, bless her.

“As if I would stoop to smuggling,” Sherlock said. “You don't use drugs or even smoke cigarettes, and your fierce adherence to regulations would prevent you from taking them in any case.” John glanced around reflexively, but nobody was eavesdropping. The nearest guard was standing against the wall some 15 feet away.

“You could be bringing...I dunno, a hacksaw?” John folded his hands in front of his chin. He couldn't seem to banish his grin.

“John.” Sherlock tipped his nose so he could look disdainfully down it at John. “I've told you, real prison breaks make no use of the ridiculous theatrical tricks utilized in those action movies you murder your brain cells with.”

John feigned deep thought and suggested, “a rope ladder then?” just to see the way it made Sherlock's brow crease in annoyance.

“You're hardly an IRA stalwart,” Sherlock said.

“Anyway, I'd just have refrained from turning myself in, if I'd wanted to be a fugitive,” John said.

“You've made it abundantly clear that you've chosen to be here, yes,” Sherlock said, his face dropping into more sullen lines. He sat back from the table a bit, and John restrained the urge to reach for him, even though there was nothing but his own propriety stopping him from grabbing Sherlock by the shoulders and shaking him.

“Don't get like that,” John said. “We've talked about this before.”

Sherlock flapped his hand dismissively. “Yes, yes,” he said. “You had good and pragmatic reasons, et cetera. We don't need to waste our limited time having the same debate.”

John rolled his eyes. They'd stopped arguing about what Sherlock called _your absurd surrender to your guilt complex_ after it became clear there was no way John's decision could be undone, but Sherlock obviously hadn't let it go. “All right, then,” he said. “Anything new?”

Sherlock made his _I detest small talk_ face. “Dr. Sawyer called and asked where you are so she can write. Mrs. Hudson wants to come see you now that you're done moving for a bit. There have been twenty-six comments on your blog asking for your prison number or for visiting orders.”

That made John laugh outright. “Do they actually think I'm checking my blog from prison?”

“They assume, correctly, that someone must be checking. Half of them are reporters,” Sherlock said. “The other half are persons you have actually conversed with, and fans of the blog who appear marginally deranged.”

“If I know them, they can write me,” John said. “But not the reporters. Or the crackpots. I'm not yet _that_ bored.”

“Obviously,” Sherlock said. They fell into silence for a moment before Sherlock tented his fingers in front of his mouth. “Mycroft released the official narrative of my return yesterday,” he said, his voice muted by his hands. “Moriarty's web and the death threats and so forth.”

“Yeah,” John said. “We do get the BBC, you know.” He straightened his shoulders. “I wanted to say, um. Thanks. For testifying for me at the sentencing.”

“Don't be an idiot,” Sherlock said. He didn't move his hands.

“I think it made a big difference,” John said. “To the judge, I mean. It obviously made a difference to- to me.”

Sherlock's face contorted as he lowered his hands. “Must we discuss this?” he half-snarled. 

“I just wanted you to know,” John said quietly.

“It wasn't enough,” Sherlock said. “It couldn't _possibly_ be enough, when I couldn't tell those idiots a fraction of the truth, of what they ought to know about the man they were condemning.” The hands flew back up to their steeple before his lips.

John smiled a bit: enough to be fond, but hopefully not enough to mock. “Sherlock,” he said. “They would have locked me up forever. What you see in me- and God knows what it is, especially after all this- is not something most people consider a virtue.”

“More fools, they,” Sherlock said. The absolute conviction in his face and voice staggered John, as ever. Sherlock had never really apologized for what he did, and John had never really forgiven him; but seeing his own trust and regard reflected in Sherlock somehow paved over a lot of un-had arguments. “I still fail to see how the circumstance of a war veteran defending the property of an elderly woman doesn't justify a departure from so-called mandatory sentencing.”

“It's all right, really,” John offered. “Even without an assault charge, it could have been much worse.” He'd heard the aggravating factors listed out by David before the prosecutor brought them up, and they did seem to balance out most of the mitigation. Try to convince Sherlock, though.

“Ridiculous,” Sherlock grumbled. “It won't be all right till this is over.”

“Five years,” John said. “Parole in two and a half. Two and a quarter, with credit for the time I spent on remand.” It was a long fucking time, but he was trying not to think that. If he could keep himself sane an hour or a day at a time, he could manage it. He had to.

“Two years, three months, four days.” John was somehow not surprised that Sherlock knew the exact numbers.

“Yes,” John said. “I'm applying for a security category reduction, in light of my cooperation and good behavior. If I'm lucky I might get down to D by the end- get some home passes and things like that.”

Sherlock's hands tightened into fists and then released. “Advise me if your visits increase,” he said quietly.

John nodded. “And I'll call as often as I can. So you'll have to pick up your phone occasionally, huh?” He cracked a smile at that, but Sherlock's expression was still deadly serious.

“John. I'll always pick up for you.”

“Well maybe not in the middle of a chase or-”

“Always,” Sherlock said sharply. He looked off into the corner of the room for a moment, then back at John's face. “Once, when I was young, I broke some hideously expensive trinket my mother had inherited. Mycroft found an appropriate scapegoat and constructed a plausible alibi, which he offered to enact for me, in exchange for some future favor.”

“Christ,” John said, rolling his eyes.

“He was exceptionally mercenary, even for a teenager,” Sherlock said.

“And thus began his long career of needling you for favors?” John suggested.

“I refused,” Sherlock said. “I went to my parents and confessed before Mycroft had the opportunity to tell them what happened.” John opened his mouth but Sherlock cut him off before he could speak. “Shut up. I'm just trying to- I understand the concept of agency.” Sherlock glared at him. “I want it to be clear: I still don't agree with you. Watching these cretins throw away years of your life is _intolerable_. But. I- respect your reasoning.”

John could count on one hand the number of times Sherlock had said he respected a decision of his. He felt oddly touched. “Um. Thank you.”

Sherlock straightened his back and fussily straightened his cuffs. “Yes, well.”

“What happened with that case they called you up to Shropshire to consult on?” John asked. “With the hunter who shot his friend?” 

“Oh, _that_.” Sherlock sniffed as if he hadn’t written to John about it in a fit of fascination mere days ago. “Not a murder at all, as it turns out. The trigger pull on the gun was far too light; it snagged on the zip of his boot as he was stepping out of the car. Hardly worth the time or travel, any idiot could have figured it out.”

“I doubt it,” John said, grinning. “Who ever heard of a man being shot by his boot? Bizarre!”

“ _Dull_ ,” Sherlock said emphatically. “Much less interesting than some of the matters I looked into while I was away, and those were just peripheral matters, since I was busy with Moriarty’s underlings.”

“Well tell me one of those then, clever dick,” John said. “It must have half-killed you to spend all that time without anyone to appreciate your brilliance.”

Sherlock disregarded the teasing as if he didn’t hear it. “All right,” he said. “Take the disappearance I investigated when I was in the Outer Terai, in Nepal.” John found himself leaning slightly forward without intending to, and had to stifle a smile as Sherlock mirrored his body language. “It started when the grown son of the house where I was staying, a veteran of the Indian Army’s Gorkha regiments, told me about his friend, a fellow veteran whom he’d had no word of after the man was injured in battle six months prior...”

****

End.


End file.
